Chapter 4

 Homicides and assaults

o “the similarities between murder and aggravated assault in circumstances, victim
-offender relationship, and other characteristics have caused some criminologists
to deem murder an “overly successful” assault. Therefore, in studying homicide
offending, we also learn about the causes and contexts of violence more
generally”
 Assaults in the US
o NCVS
 Aggravated assault:
 “Attack or attempted attack with a weapon, regardless of whether
or not an injury occurred and attack without a weapon when
serious injury results”
 With injury =
o an attack without a weapon when serious injury results or
an attack with a weapon involving any injury.
 Threatened with a weapon =
o threat or attempted attack by an offender armed with a gun,
knife, or other object used as a weapon, not resulting in
victim injury
 Current statistics, UCR (2019)
o Aggravated assaults accounted for 68% of violent crimes reported to law
enforcement
 Estimated 821,182 aggravated assaults in the nation; 1,203,808 total
violent crimes
 The estimated rate of aggravated assaults was 250.2 per 100,000
inhabitants
 From 2010-2019 the rate of aggravated assaults decreased 1%
o Of the aggravated assault offenses for which law enforcement provided expanded
data:
 25.2 percent were committed with personal weapons, such as hands, fists,
or feet.
 Firearms were used in 27.6 percent of aggravated assaults
 Knives or cutting instruments were used in 17.5 percent.
 Other weapons were used in 29.8 percent of aggravated assaults
Aggravated assault victims & offenders (NCVS, 2018)
 Other characteristics, aggravated assault
o Males more often attacked by strangers
 Although close to 50/50 strangers/nonstrangers
 Nonstrangers are typically friends/acquaintances
o Females more often attacked by nonstrangers
 Friends/acquaintances, intimates, other relatives
 Males are more often attacked by strangers, while females are more often attacked by
non-strangers (aggravated assault)
o True or False
 Homicides and assaults in the US
o UCR:
 Murder
 Non-negligent manslaughter
 “Willful (nonnegligent) killing of one human being by another”
(FBI, 2012)
 Manslaughter by negligence
 Current statistics, UCR (2019)
o Murder accounted for ~1.4 percent of violent crimes reported to law enforcement
o The estimated number of murders in the nation was 16245
 A 0.3 percent increase from the 2018 estimate
o 5.0 murders per 100,000 people
 Homicides are more likely to occur in the south
o True or False
 Other characteristics, murder
o Typically murders involve friends and acquaintances, rather than strangers
o Majority of murders committed with handguns
o Circumstances typically include brawls/arguments
 Result of confrontations
 Intraracial
 Recreational settings
 Arrest clearances
o When considering clearances of violent crimes, 61.4 percent of murder offenses,
and 52.3 percent of aggravated assault offenses were cleared (UCR, 2019)
 Compare: 45.5% violent crimes and 17.2% property crimes cleared
 Solvability : suspect believed to have committed crime, but was not
arrested
 Clearance : “at least one person is arrested, charged with the commission
of an offense, and turned over to the court for prosecution” (FBI, 2012)
 Exceptional clearances
o When law enforcement cannot arrest or charge offenders
 E.g., death of the offender
 Homicides involving females more likely to result in exceptional
clearances, especially if murdered by intimate partner, who then
commits suicide
 Typically involve older offenders
 (i.e., pact to end lives together)
 Exceptional clearances include
o Suicide
 o Death by natural causes or accidents
o Extradition
o All of the above
o None of the above
 Importance of arrest clearances
o Regardless of the goals of criminal justice, the process begins with the arrest of
offenders
 Without an arrest, there is no further processing of offenders, nor
reduction of crime
o Offenders who are not arrested are free to reoffend, increasing risk of
victimization
o Failure to arrest further traumatizes victim’s families and contributes to fear of
victimization
o Failure to arrest undermines morale of law enforcement personnel and agencies
 Sex, race/ethnicity, and age
o Generally:
 Homicides with female victims are more likely to be cleared by arrest than
homicides with male victims
 Homicides involving white victims are cleared more quickly; homicides
with Latino victims have a lower risk of clearance
 Homicides involving young victims cleared more frequently and quickly
than those involving older victims
 Homicides involving young victims are cleared more quickly and frequently because
police are generally more sympathetic when very young victims are involved; children
are usually in the company of others who can provide info to police
o True or False
 Weapons and felonies
o Generally:
 Homicides with weapons other than firearms are cleared more
frequently/quickly
 Concomitant felonies are rape or robbery and may be more difficult to
clear
 Victim-offender relationship
o Generally:
 Higher clearances for non-strangers (private residence, family member, or
domestic) homicides have higher clearances than stranger homicides
 Homicides by nonwhite offenders more likely to be cleared by arrest
 Organizational and investigation variables
o Arrest clearances regarded as performance measures
o “Skimming” : selecting cases from the assigned workload that are most likely to
result in an arrest
o Responsibility of patrol officers and detectives
  Law enforcement policies and practices make a difference in clearing
cases:
 Multiple murders (‘multicide’)
o Mass murder
 “consist of the slaughter of four or more victims by one or few assailants
within a single event, lasting anywhere from a few minutes to as long as
several hours” (Fox & Levin, 2015: 162)
o Serial murder
 Less agreement
 “Offenders unlawfully commit at least two discretely separate murders
over a period of time” (Gurian, 2015: 3)
 Mass murders
o Possess less challenge to law enforcement than serial murder
 Found at the scene
 One time event
 Less primary information about them
 Less public excitement, unless the murders involve sex and sadism
 Other characteristics (predominately)
o Victim/offender relationships
 Families and acquaintances
o Weapons
 Firearms
o Circumstances
 Felony-related
 Role of the news media
o “Symbiotic”
 Media seeks attention of audience by exploiting its interest in violent
crime
 Mass murderers look to the media to help them construct their identities
 Case example: James Holmes
o July 20, 2012, shooting in Aurora CO
o Movie premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises”
o Gunman enters theater wearing throat protector and leggings, gas mask, and long
black coat
 Throws two tear gas grenades, opens fire
 Inside his car, police find AR-15 assault rifle, Remington 12-gauge
shotgun, two 40-caliber Glock handguns
 Had purchased 6000 rounds of ammunition
 Serial homicide
o 35 serial murderers in US at any given time
o 100 serial murderers in US at any given time
o 4000-5000 Americans victim to serial killing each year
 Estimates Excessive?
o Murder accounts for .1% total crimes in US .01% in England and Wales) (FBI
UCR, 2004; Coleman et al., 2007)
o Estimated 3000-5000 people killed by serial murder each year = 144 murders per
serial killer (?)
o Homicide accounts for ~20,000 deaths annually
 It is likely that there are 10 or less serial killers operating each year, which would result
in ~100 victims
o True or False
 Distortion of social issues
o [Serial murder] is an issue of public concern that can be shaped into a major
social problem with the help of the media
o There is a lack of valid and reliable statistics, or pertinent statistics are ignored
o Constituencies are organized to use statistics to promote specific agendas
 “Extraordinarily ordinary”
o Difficult to identify and apprehend
 Hold full-time jobs
 Involved in stable relationships
 Members of various community groups
 Debunking the myths
o Lone white male
 10-20% of serial killings attributed to two or more individuals working
together
 ~17% female [KNOWN cases]
 ~20% African American
 Operate locally
 Trends in serial homicide
o No publicly available source of homicide data that records serial homicides
 Estimates drawn from stranger homicide records and newspaper accounts
o “Linkage blindness”: inability of law enforcement to communicate or share
information in a way that connects similar unsolved crimes
 Explanations
o Symbolic interaction
 Few murders or assaults are planned
 Social situations that begin with conflict
 Multitude of motives
 “Aggressive actions seek to compel and deter others, to achieve a
favorable social identity, and to obtain justice, as defined by the actor”
(Felson, 1993: 104)
 Subcultural theories
o Insults to self-image (Wolfgang and Ferracuti, 1967)
  Subculture of violence : norms, values, and behavioral expectations that
violence represents problem-solving behavior
 Explaining the characteristics of arrest clearances
o Discretionary factors in law enforcement
 Homicide is the most serious crime, police will work diligently to resolve
o Non-discretionary factors
 Body location, weapons, homicide circumstances, area population
Explaining the characteristics of arrest clearances, cont’d
o Hypotheses from Black’s theory
o Stratification : Homicide cases with victims who are female, nonwhite, or
younger are less likely to be cleared (social wealth)
o Socioeconomic status : Homicide cases occurring in lower SES areas less likely to
be cleared
o Social control : Victims with deviant lifestyles (prior arrest records) less likely to
be cleared Explaining the characteristics of arrest clearances, cont’d
o Culture : Homicide cases in areas with less educated people less likely to be
cleared
o Organization (collective action): homicide cases in areas with smaller percentage
of owner-occupied dwelling units less likely to be cleared
o Less frequently cleared if a firearm is used, the homicide occurred with a
concomitant felony, or was drug/gang related
 Explaining serial homicides
o Biological theories
o XYY chromosome:
 human male has an extra male Y-chromosome, giving a total of 47
chromosomes instead of the more usual 46
o Blood levels of neurotransmitters (e.g., serotonin)
o Types/levels of hormones (e.g., testosterone)
o Psychological factors
 Psychoses : a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so
impaired that contact is lost with external reality
 Dissociative disorders: conditions that involve disruptions or breakdowns
of memory, awareness, identity, or perception
 Psychoanalytical factors: personality organization and the dynamics of
personality development
 Personality disorders: a deeply ingrained and maladaptive pattern of
behavior of a specified kind, typically manifest by the time one reaches
adolescence and causing long-term difficulties in personal relationships or
in functioning in society
 Psychopathies: a mental disorder in which an individual manifests amoral
and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful
 personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from
experience, etc
o Sociological theories
 Urbanization (social cohesion)
 Aggression (expressive versus instrumental)
 Child abuse (attachment theory)
 Neutralization (dehumanization)
 Labelling (once a criminal…)
 Social control (schools, the home, community)
 Interventions
o Support for the following causes of the nationwide decline in homicide:
 Growth of homicide in 1980s largely due to 15-24 year old age group
 ~1993, decline in handgun homicides
 Drug markets have matured and stabilized
 Other dispute resolution mechanisms emerge
 Late 1990s-early 21st century, economic expansion increased number of
legitimate job opportunities
 Increased use of incarceration  Prison population expanding
 Gun control
 Increasing sanctions, tracing guns, limiting dealers, restrictions on
buyers
 Legislation and social policies impacting intimate partner homicides
 Directed patrols (“hot spots”)
 Increasing clearance rates
o Cold-case squads
 No statute of limitations on homicides
 Removes offenders from society
 Positive feedback from family
 Image of law enforcement as caring, persistent
 Improves morale of police agencies
 Reviewing cases
o Cases at least a year old referred because of time constraints, workload, or lack of
viable leads
o Priorities:
 Murder victim or second surviving victim identified, death ruled a
homicide
 Suspects previously named/identified
 Arrest warrant previously issued
 Significant physical evidence can be reprocessed
 New leads within last 6 months
 Critical witnesses accessible and cooperative
 Resources
 o DNA analysis, advances in fingerprint technology
o Publicizing through the media
o Cooperation of witnesses and informants
 Apprehending serial killers
o Cooperation among agencies
 Interagency conferences, information clearinghouses, task forces, central
coordination efforts, profiling, investigative consultants, forensic
consultants, major incident room procedures, solicitation from the public,
computer analysis systems, offender rewards, psychics, rapid response
teams, centralized investigative networks…
o Investigative profiling
 Behavioral Science Unit, FBI
 Intuition and experience of profiler
 Constructs psychological profile – useful when evidence of
psychopathy (e.g., sadistic torture, lust/mutilation murders, or
evisceration)
 David Canter, University of Liverpool
 Empirical base considering victim info, statistical analysis,
generation of probabilities
 Geographical profiling
 3D probability map associated with offender
 Conclusions
o Murders and aggravated assaults primarily:
 Young Black males as offender and victims
 Victims known to offenders
 Violence as the outcome of brawls/argument
o Clearance rates
 Declining
 Less likely for Latino victims
 More likely for younger victims
 More likely for nonstrangers
 Less likely for firearms
 Discussion questions
o Describe the myths and facts associated with serial killers
o Discuss the role of the media with respect to homicides
o Compared to other violent crimes, why is homicide in particular linked to
entertainment?
o In cases of partnered serial murder, should all parties be treated equally by the
criminal justice system (why or why not)?
 Chapter recap
o Do you understand who is most likely to be victimized in homicides or
aggravated assaults?
 o Do you understand arrest clearances?
o Do you understand the difference between serial and mass murder?
o Can you differentiate among biological, psychological and sociological theories
for understanding serial murder?
 Which of the following crimes was the most reported to law enforcement (recent UCR
statistics)?
o Homicide
o Aggravated assault
o Serial murder
o Mass murder
 True or false: In America, homicides are more likely to occur in the Midwest.
o True or False