The Unpredictability of Murder

Abstract

There is minimal research that has investigated the characteristics distinguishing youth who commit murder to other juvenile offenders. Of the research that has been done, scholars have identified a wide variety of factors that distinguish these offenders, including poor family environments, emotional and social problems, poor mental health, and behavioral disorders. Using data from Pathways to Desistance, a study of 1,354 serious youthful offenders, we examined how 8 demographic characteristics and 35 risk factors distinguish between those youth who were charged with some type of homicide and those youth who were not charged with any type of homicide. We find that only 18 (1.33%) youth were charged with a homicide offense. Among the predictors, age, intelligence quotient (IQ), exposure to violence, perceptions of community disorder, and prevalence of gun carrying are significantly different across the two groups. Results from a rare-events logistic regression that simultaneously examined the relationship between these five risk factors and their ability to distinguish between the two groups indicate that only lower IQ and a greater exposure to violence were significant. Finally, a higher number of risk factors were associated with a higher likelihood that youth would be charged with homicide.

Adverse Childhood Experiences, Commitment Offense, and Race/Ethnicity: Are the Effects Crime-, Race-, and Ethnicity-Specific?

“…In other words, clinical samples of youth evince a high preponderance of abusive experiences and deprivation. These findings were consistent with studies of youth residing in detention, correctional, and confinement facilities [7,8,9,10,11] where adverse childhood experiences are endemic.…”

Psychosocial Factors and Juvenile Homicide in Argentina

“…Similarities observed allow disregard the hypothesis of significant association between psychopathic traits and juvenile homicidal behavior and reveal that vulnerability should be the focus for prevention efforts on both sides. This collectively homogeneous image is consistent with previous studies in Latin America (Wiese & Folino, 2009) and North America (DeLisi, Piquero, & Cardwell, 2016). In the study by DeLisi et al (2016), out of the 43 variables that covered three dimensions-individual, familial, and situational-authors found significant differences in only five variables of the bivariate analysis, and of these, only low IQ and the history of exposure to violence remained statistically significant when included into a logistic regression model.…”

“…This collectively homogeneous image is consistent with previous studies in Latin America (Wiese & Folino, 2009) and North America (DeLisi, Piquero, & Cardwell, 2016). In the study by DeLisi et al (2016), out of the 43 variables that covered three dimensions-individual, familial, and situational-authors found significant differences in only five variables of the bivariate analysis, and of these, only low IQ and the history of exposure to violence remained statistically significant when included into a logistic regression model. In addition to the concurrence in findings from that study and ours, it is interesting to note that both agree on the use of some measures-PCL-YV, WAI, RPI-and in the absence of significant differences in such variables between the groups.…”

Prospective Prediction of Juvenile Homicide/Attempted Homicide among Early-Onset Juvenile Offenders

“…Individual-level risk factors among juvenile homicide offenders have included a history of violent offending prior to the homicide offense [13,20], as well as educational deficits and alcohol abuse (in retrospective comparisons to non-violent delinquents; [17,24]). Examining 1354 serious adolescent offenders from the Pathways to Desistance Study, prior work has demonstrated that only lower IQ and exposure to violence predict having been charged with homicide [25]. Examining retrospective criminal histories of adult male habitual criminals, DeLisi and colleagues demonstrated that juvenile confinement predicted subsequent murder arrests, even upon control of a host of other official criminal offending measures, age of onset, and race/ethnicity [26].…”