No abstract

Both relative and absolute deprivation have effects on crime. These two concepts may be complementary, but much scholarship has treated them as separate. The present study assesses whether the effects of relative and absolute deprivation, measured as income inequality and disadvantage, respectively, interact in their effect on known homicide counts in U.S. counties. A multilevel regression model shows that there is a significant interaction between income inequality and disadvantage predicting homicide counts known to police. The plot of this interaction shows that when disadvantage is extremely high, increasing income inequality does not increase known homicides. The less disadvantage there is, the greater the effect of increasing income inequality on homicide counts in U.S. counties. This finding suggests that the effect of relative deprivation on known homicide is contingent on levels of absolute deprivation and vice versa. The implication of this finding is discussed.

Relative deprivation and absolute deprivation both have effects on crime. Although these two concepts are often treated as separate, some scholarship has suggested that the two may be complementary. The current study assesses whether the effects of relative and absolute deprivation interact statistically in their effect on violent crime by testing an interaction effect between income inequality and disadvantage. Using data from U.S. counties, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) regression models show that there is a significant interaction between relative and absolute deprivation predicting violent crime rates. The plot of this interaction shows that when absolute deprivation is high, there is less violence in high inequality counties than in counties with medium levels of inequality. The implication of this finding is discussed.

Domestic violence may be less representative of a unique form of violent behavior and more indicative of an overall tendency toward violence. This article explores this issue with two years of police data from a Mid-South city. Findings revealed that domestic violence histories were more likely in any type of homicide case, and that there were both similarities and differences in predicting general and domestic violence homicide cases. Further implications of these findings within the context of law enforcement strategies and responses to domestic violence are discussed.

Although researchers have questioned their coverage and accuracy, the media routinely are used as sources of data on mass murder in the United States. Databases