Understanding gender-specific intimate partner homicide: A theoretical and domestic service-oriented approach

Research on intimate partner homicide has increased in recent years, partially due to growing efforts to disaggregate homicides into meaningful categories but also because of a growing interest in policy responses toward domestic violence. Much of this research tends to focus on two perspectives—exposure reduction and the backlash/retaliation hypotheses—when explaining the link between intimate partner homicide and domestic violence resources. Support has been found for both approaches even though they offer contradictory predictions. This frustrating finding is further complicated by methodological issues, such as the inability to address the rare nature of these events, offer a wide range of domestic violence services and resources and control for structural characteristics of urban areas where violence is found. This issue is addressed by offering a systematic examination of male- and female-victim intimate partner homicide in 2000. The current study investigates both exposure reduction and backlash arguments, in addition to economic deprivation and a number of structural factors relevant to homicide rates. Results suggest that while these perspectives are relevant to intimate partner homicides, there are statistically significant differences across the gender-specific models once the corrected statistical test for coefficient equality is estimated.     

INTEGRATING RACE,PLACE AND MOTIVE IN SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION THEORY: LESSONS FROM A COMPARISON OF BLACK AND LATINO HOMICIDE TYPES IN TWO IMMIGRANT DESTINATION CITIES*

In this paper, we examine and compare the impact of social disorganization, including recent immigration, and other predictors on community counts of black and Latino motive‐specific homicides in Miami and San Diego. Homicides for 1985 to 1995 are disaggregated into escalation, intimate, robbery and drug‐related motives. Negative binomial regression models with corrections for spatial autocorrelation demonstrate that there are similarities and differences in effects of social disorganization and other predictors by motive‐specific outcomes, as well as for outcomes across ethnic groups within cities and within ethnic groups across cities. Recent immigration is negatively or not associated with most outcomes. Overall, the study shows the importance of disaggregating homicide data by race/ethnicity and motive and demonstrates that predictions based on existing theories are qualified on local conditions.     

A Move Toward Specificity: Examining Urban Disadvantage and Race-and Relationship-Specific Homicide Rates

The purpose of this research is to estimate the differential impact of structural conditions on race- and relationship-specific homicide rates for U.S. cities in 1990. The structural conditions commonly employed in race-specific homicide research are examined, such as job accessibility, economic deprivation, racial segregation, and racial inequality. Furthermore, four relationship categories of homicide—acquaintance, family, stranger, and intimate—are disaggregated by racial group. The detailed relationship-specific homicide rates are compared to a baseline homicide rate to determine whether structural factors associated with urban disadvantage similarly influence homicide rates across relationship types. The results indicate that differences emerge in the impact of structural conditions on homicides disaggregated by race- and relationship-specific categories. Theoretical explanations consistent with criminology and race-relations literature are discussed, as well as the potential benefits and implications for studies that pursue more meaningful and detailed classifications in homicide offending.     

Exposure to Family Violence in Childhood and Intimate Partner Perpetration or Victimization in Adulthood: Exploring Intergenerational Transmission in Urban Thailand

Investigators who study intimate partner violence have long recognized a relationship between exposure to violence in the family of origin and subsequent offending and victimization in the family context. This relationship holds not only for direct exposure (i.e., experiencing violence), but also for indirect exposure (i.e., witnessing violence against a parent or sibling). Typically, this relationship has been attributed to a social learning process that results in the intergenerational transmission of family violence. In this study, we explore intergenerational transmission in a sample of 816 married women in Bangkok, Thailand to determine how childhood exposure to violence in the family of origin is related to intimate partner perpetration and victimization during adulthood. Our results show that there are indeed long-term and significant effects of childhood exposure to family violence on the likelihood of Thai women’s psychological and physical intimate partner perpetration. However, these effects appear to be indirect. Additionally, our results demonstrate a direct association between childhood exposure to parental intimate partner violence and subsequent psychological and physical victimization in adulthood.     

IMMIGRATION AND CRIME IN AN ERA OF TRANSFORMATION: A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF HOMICIDES IN SAN DIEGO NEIGHBORHOODS, 1980–2000*

Emerging research associated with the “immigration revitalization” perspective suggests that immigration has been labeled inaccurately as a cause of crime in contemporary society. In fact, crime seems to be unexpectedly low in many communities that exhibit high levels of the following classic indicators of social disorganization: residential instability, ethnic heterogeneity, and immigration. But virtually all research conducted to date has been cross-sectional in nature and therefore unable to demonstrate how the relationship between immigration and crime might covary over time. This limitation is significant, especially because current versions of social disorganization theory posit a dynamic relationship between structural factors and crime that unfolds over time. The current study addresses this issue by exploring the effects of immigration on neighborhood-level homicide trends in the city of San Diego, California, using a combination of racially/ethnically disaggregated homicide victim data and community structural indicators collected for three decennial census periods. Consistent with the revitalization thesis, results show that the increased size of the foreign-born population reduces lethal violence over time. Specifically, we find that neighborhoods with a larger share of immigrants have fewer total, non-Latino White, and Latino homicide victims. More broadly, our findings suggest that social disorganization in heavily immigrant cities might be largely a function of economic deprivation rather than forms of “neighborhood” or “system” stability.     

Can Situational and Structural Factors Differentiate Between Intimate Partner and “Other” Homicide?

A large body of research has identified strong and consistent correlates of aggregated intimate homicide incidents; however, the bulk of these studies focuses on the influence of either case or neighborhood characteristics on homicide types, but not both. This study examines data collected from 739 homicides in two distinct metropolitan cities to determine which factors differentiate intimate and non-intimate homicide. Findings reveal that intimate partner homicides (IPH) are more likely to involve females both as victims and offenders when compared to non-IPH incidents. In addition, IPH homicides are more likely to be committed with weapons than non-IPH, but this finding only appears in Indianapolis homicides. Indeed, one of the stark contrasts between Indianapolis and Newark was the much greater prevalence of firearms involved in IPH homicides in Indianapolis. This suggests the need for future research that sorts out patterns of household gun possession, factors influencing community levels of household gun possession, and the use of legally- or illegally-possessed firearms in IPH homicide.     

INDUSTRIAL SHIFT,POLARIZED LABOR MARKETS AND URBAN VIOLENCE: MODELING THE DYNAMICS BETWEEN THE ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION AND DISAGGREGATED HOMICIDE*

Industrial restructuring marks the removal of a manufacturing and production‐based economy in urban areas, which had served as a catalyst in concentrating disadvantage and polarizing labor markets since the 1970s. Although scholars have established a relationship between concentrated disadvantage — poverty, joblessness, racial residential segregation — and urban violence in cross‐sectional studies, this literature has yet to estimate whether economic restructuring contributed to the change in urban homicide over time. Modeling this relationship requires an analytical strategy that incorporates specific indicators of (race and gender) polarized labor markets, separate from indicators of urban disadvantage, on disaggregated homicides while taking into account the growing dependency of urban cities on formal social control (via police presence and rise in incarceration). In this study I provide a theoretical rationale for linking industrial restructuring to urban homicide. Using a multivariate strategy to capture the shift in labor market forces and disaggregated homicides from 1980 to 1990, I also estimate the impact of this relationship. The results provide evidence of the industrial ship and documents both the decline in Manufacturing jobs for black males and black females and a growth in the service sector opportunities for white males only. I also find that industrial restructuring had a unique impact on disaggregated homicide beyond what has previously been established in cross‐sectional studies.     

Heterosexual intimate partner homicide: review of ten years of clinical experience

Most of the literature on intimate partner homicide addresses violence between the two partners, spousal abuse, and family violence. There is less focus on the relationship of mental illness, intellectual functioning, and drug and alcohol abuse to these homicides. We investigated this type of homicide in a collection of forensic cases seen by the first author over a period of 10 years. Twenty-eight patients who underwent forensic psychiatric evaluation for heterosexual intimate partner homicide from August 1993 to June 2003 were studied using a retrospective case review methodology. We found that firearms were used as the method of killing more often by females than by males. We also compared method of killing with substance abuse and intoxication at the time of the homicide. Educational status indicates that this group of accused perpetrators is functioning at higher intellectual levels compared with a previously studied sample of filicides. We also found significant presence of serious mental illness in our sample of accused perpetrators of heterosexual intimate partner homicide.     

Hands-on Killing of Intimate Partners as a Function of Sex and Relationship Status/State

Guided by evolutionary psychology and a situational perspective on violence, we generated three hypotheses to investigate whether the percentage of intimate partner homicides by beating, a hands-on homicide method, varies with the victim-offender relationship. We tested these hypotheses with a national database that includes incident-level information on over 50,000 intimate partner homicides. Results indicate that: (1) men are more likely than women to kill a partner by beating, and (2) men are more likely to kill their partners by beating when the relationship is dating or non-marital cohabiting (versus legal marriage). We argue that the lack of commitment in these non-marital relationships may produce greater jealousy in men, driving the perpetrator to kill his victim in a more violent manner (i.e., beating), relative to men who kill their wives.     

Reducing intimate partner homicides: The effects of federally-funded shelter service availability in California

Over twenty-five years of policy and scholarly attention to the problem of intimate partner violence appears to have generated greater victim safety. Intimate partner homicides, the most serious form of violence between intimates, have been declining for nearly three decades in many contexts, but not all. This study built on a small number of studies that had advanced knowledge about the policy-relevant factors behind the intimate partner homicide decline. The analysis described here utilized a set of county-level data from California from 1987 to 2000 to estimate the effects of shelter-based service availability on race/ethnicity-specific female intimate partner homicide victimization. The study relied on a new measure of service availability in an attempt to overcome limitations with previously used indicators. This analysis did not reveal an effect of shelter-based service availability and criminal justice system responses on changes in female intimate partner homicide victimizations. Reasons for these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

STRUCTURAL CONDITIONS AND RACIAL HOMICIDE PATTERNS: A LOOK AT THE MULTIPLE DISADVANTAGES IN URBAN AREAS*

This research examines the differential effects of structural conditions on race-specific victim and offender homicide rates in large U.S. cities in 1990. While structural theories of race relations and criminological explanations are reviewed, particular attention is given to those structural theories that highlight racial competition, economic and labor market opportunity, and racial segregation as essential for an examination of racially disaggregated homicide offending. The effects of these and other structural conditions are estimated for four racially distinct homicide offending models—black intraracial, white intraracial, black interracial, and white interracial homicides. The results suggest that the structural conditions that lead to race-specific victim and offender homicide rates differ significantly among the four models. Economic deprivation and local opportunity structures are found to influence significantly the rates of intraracial homicide offending, while racial inequality contributes solely to black interracial homicide rates. In addition, our findings indicate that blacks and whites face different economic and social realities related to economic deprivation and social isolation. The differential impact of these structural conditions and other labor market factors are discussed.     

The Gender Gap in Violent Victimization, 1973–2004

In this paper, data from the NCS and NCVS are developed for the purpose of describing long-term trends in male and female violent victimization for the period 1973–2004. More specifically, gender-specific trends in violence are compared according to crime type and victim–offender relationship. Despite their potential usefulness, these data have not been published previously. The data reveal that the gender gap in robbery victimization has remained relatively stable while the gender gaps in aggravated and simple assault victimization have narrowed over time. Results varied when the data were disaggregated by victim–offender relationship. Male and female rates of nonstranger simple assault and nonstranger robbery were roughly equivalent throughout the period, and the greater risk for male nonstranger aggravated assault that was evident three decades ago has largely disappeared. The gender gap persists in stranger assault, but has narrowed somewhat because male rates of victimization have declined more than female rates. In addition, male and female trends and the gender gap in nonlethal intimate partner violence differ from the patterns established in intimate partner homicide studies. The paper concludes with a discussion of research that is needed to understand why the gender gap in violent victimization has changed for some types of violence but not others, and how greater attention to gender will improve efforts to understand crime trends.

Explaining gang homicides in Newark, New Jersey: Collective behavior or social disorganization?

Although numerous studies examined the distinction between gang and non-gang homicides, there is nonetheless a continued need for research in this domain. Specifically, few studies investigated the etiological differences between these homicides at the multivariate level or attempted to examine the relative robustness of the primary explanations of gang homicides—social disorganization and Decker's (1996) collective behavior hypothesis of gang violence. This article therefore addresses this void by focusing on gang-related homicides in Newark, New Jersey over a sixty-six month period. The findings of this study suggested that there were significant differences between gang and non-gang homicides at the incident level. At the multivariate level, the authors found that homicides precipitated by the operationalization of Decker's (1996) escalation hypothesis were more likely to be gang-related. Conversely, the social disorganization measure did not predict gang homicide, while poverty was a significant predictor. When measures of both potential explanations were entered into the same model only the micro-level escalation hypothesis retained its significance.     

HOW DIFFERENT IS VIOLENCE IN THE HOME? AN EXAMINATION OF SOME CORRELATES OF STRANGER AND INTIMATE HOMICIDE*

Research into the nature and sources of intimate violence has not resolved the question of whether intimate violence differs from other forms of criminal violence to the extent that it should be considered separately. Some scholars have posited that the family context of intimate violence makes it unique because the intimacy and emotional attachment that usually characterize family relationships are absent from stranger violence. In contrast, others have suggested that intimate violence is like all other forms of violence and does not require separate consideration. If intimate violence does not differ from stranger violence the two must share common explanatory factors. I apply hierarchical modeling techniques to data from the Supplementary Homicide Reports to estimate multilevel models of stranger homicide and compare them with results from research on intimate homicide. The results suggest that intimate homicides differ from stranger homicides in several important respects and warrant separate treatment.     

NO COMMUNITY IS AN ISLAND: THE EFFECTS OF RESOURCE DEPRIVATION ON URBAN VIOLENCE IN SPATIALLY AND SOCIALLY PROXIMATE COMMUNITIES*

The link between resource deprivation and urban violence has long been explored in criminological research. Studies, however, have largely ignored the potential for resource deprivation in particular communities to affect rates of violence in others. The relative inattention is notable because of the strong theoretical grounds to anticipate influences that extend both to geographically contiguous areas and to those that, though not contiguous, share similar social characteristics. We argue that such influences—what we term spatial and social proximity effects, respectively—constitute a central feature of community dynamics. To support this argument, we develop and test theoretically derived hypotheses about spatial and social proximity effects of resource deprivation on aggregated and disaggregated homicide counts. Our analyses indicate that local area resource deprivation contributes to violence in socially proximate communities, an effect that, in the case of instrumental homicides, is stronger when such communities are spatially proximate. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for theories focused on community‐level social processes and violence, and for policies aimed at reducing crime in disadvantaged areas.     

Predictors of Women’s Same-Sex Partner Violence Perpetration

The present study examined family of origin, individual characteristics, and intimate relationship variables as predictors of women’s reports (N?=?209; M?=?29.5 years) of physical aggression toward their current or most recent same-sex partner in the past year. Participants completed measures that assessed a series of family of origin, individual, and intimate relationship variables. Results of a least-squares regression revealed that identifying as heterosexual (as opposed to lesbian), higher levels of relationship fusion, more experiences of psychological aggression victimization, and having more prior physically aggressive relationships were associated with more frequent perpetration of partner violence. Results of exploratory models testing whether internalized homophobia or dominance/accommodation were indirectly related to physical aggression perpetration revealed that fusion (i.e., enmeshment with one’s partner) mediated the relationship between internalized homophobia and perpetration of partner violence. Similarly, fusion mediated the association between dominance/accommodation and the perpetration of partner violence. Findings underscore the importance that individual and relationship characteristics have in predicting partner violence perpetration in women’s same-sex relationships.     

A test of social learning and intergenerational transmission among batterers

This research examined the direct and indirect transmission of family-of-origin violence among a sample of male domestic violence offenders. Intergenerational transmission of violence was tested by examining the effects of childhood corporal punishment experiences and witnessing inter-parental physical violence on the odds of reporting minor and severe intimate partner violence perpetration in adulthood. Social learning mechanisms were applied to examine the relationship between abuse experiences and the incidence of minor and severe forms of intimate partner violence. Use of a sample of 204 male domestic batterers attending court-mandated family violence intervention programs in an urban setting revealed considerable variation in minor and severe intimate partner violence. Results from logistic regression models suggested intergenerational transmission and social learning provided distinct mechanisms for both minor and severe forms of intimate partner violence.     

INTIMATE PARTNER VIOLENCE IN U.S. METROPOLITAN AREAS: THE CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES OF POLICE AND SOCIAL SERVICES*

Although community responses to the problem of intimate partner violence typically focus on increasing and improving policing and social services, few studies have examined the relationship among police force size, social service providers, and women's safety at home. To address this issue, we use data from the National Crime Victimization Survey to examine patterns of intimate partner violence for 40 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) over a 16‐year period (1989–2004). We analyze the data using three‐level multilevel models, with individual respondents (N = 487,166) nested within years, nested within MSAs. Net of other important individual and contextual factors, the results show that women's likelihood of victimization is significantly lower in MSAs that employ more sworn officers per capita, whereas the states’ mandatory arrest laws are not found to have significant independent effects. Above and beyond the effects of police force size, we also find a significant negative relationship between the size of the social service workforce and intimate partner violence. Future research should develop collaborative data collection efforts to examine the specific activities of police and social service workers in dealing with intimate partner violence so that the mechanisms underlying these significant relationships can be understood more clearly.