American Homicide

Evaluating Contemporary Crime Drop(s) in America, New York City, and Many Other Places

“…), shifts in the distribution or composition of the population (e.g. immigration trends), disruption of widespread illicit drug distribution paths, and events that modify significantly a nation's perception of its government's legitimacy (Blumstein & Wallman, 2006;LaFree, 1998;Roth, 2010). A relatively large literature on nation-specific crime trends has emerged in recent years, much of it unpublished and much of it focused on relatively longterm trends rather than the recent crime drop.…”

Exploring and explaining the geography of homicide: patterns of lethal violence in Britain and Europe 1805–1900

“…Long histories of deep repression, along with the major disturbances to social relations and expectations created when systems of repression were abruptly ended by the central state, certainly affected homicide rates elsewhere. The map of homicide rates in the United States 1937 -41 recently published by Roth 74 makes it clear that the ex-slave states still had massively higher homicide rates compared to almost everywhere else in America, with most Southern states having rates at least six times higher than those found across New England. Thus three quarters of a century after the abolition of slavery the legacy of the violence implicit and explicit in the slave system, which affected masters, slaves, free blacks and poor whites alike, was still a core influence.…”

“…The English and Welsh homicide rate remained high until the mid-1860s, he argues, because it was 'rooted in political anger and alienation'. 43 The rapid decline of Scottish homicide rates after 1848 therefore suggests there are considerable problems in applying Roth's theory. However, in one specific area, the Highlands of Scotland, it may have considerable relevance.…”

“…A major discontinuity, involving up to half a century of rising murder rates in some regions, occurred in the years of economic, social and political crisis in the later sixteenth and early Downloaded by [Northeastern University] at 13:27 19 February 2015 seventeenth centuries. 21 However, although Roth's recent book has briefly addressed this subject 22 , the possibility that early nineteenth-century Britain also witnessed major and sustained rises in homicide rates has yet to be systematically researched, and this section will therefore explore this issue. Both Figure 1 and Figure 2, which are based on five-year moving averages, make it clear that homicide rates did not steadily decline in Britain.…”

Spatial patterns of homicide and political legitimacy in Europe*

“…The first is that a lack of legitimacy breaks down the social institutions that control violent behaviors (LaFree, 1998;Roth, 2009). Essentially, when political institutions begin to lose their "moral validity," people feel less obligated to defend and abide by the rules of society (see Granovetter, 1985).…”