An Empirical Analysis of 30 Years of U.S. Juvenile and Adult Sexual Homicide Offender Data: Race and Age Differences in the Victim–Offender Relationship

Abstract: Little is known about the racial patterns of crimes committed by sexual homicide offenders (SHOs). This study examined race and age influences on victim–offender relationship for juvenile and adult SHOs. A large sample (N = 3868) from the Supplemental Homicide Reports (1976–2005) was used. Analyses of victim–offender patterns included examining victim age effects (child, adolescent, adult, and elderly). The findings revealed several race‐ and age‐based differences. Black offenders were significantly overrepresented in the SHO population. This finding held for juveniles and adults independently. White SHOs were highly likely to kill within their race, “intra‐racially” (range 91–100%) across four victim age categories, whereas Black SHOs killed both intra‐racially (range 24–82%) and inter‐racially (18–76%), with the likelihood of their killing inter‐racially increasing as the age of the victim increased. This study underscores the importance of considering victim–offender racial patterns in sexual murder investigations, and it offers practical implications for offender profiling.     

Homicide victim/offender relationship in Florida Medical Examiner District 8

This study examined the correlations between victim/offender relationship and three variables: motive, weapon choice, and number of injuries inflicted. Empirical relationship and motive categories were used. The sample consisted of 57 intentional homicide cases from Florida Medical Examiner District 8 between the years 1992 and 1996. Relationships were divided into primary and secondary categories. Primary relationships included intimates, relatives, and friends; secondary relationships included acquaintances and strangers. Motives were classified as romantic dispute, argument/conflict, revenge, or felony type; weapons as firearm or contact; and number of injuries inflicted as single or multiple. A significant correlation was found between victim/offender relationship and homicide motive; however, the revenge and felony type motive categories did not differ. Unexpectedly, no correlation was found between victim/offender relationship and either weapon choice or number of injuries inflicted. Further study is needed of the interactions between homicide victim/offender relationship and motive, weapon selection, and number of injuries inflicted.     

Social Security area population projections: 1987

The following article, first published as Actuarial Study No. 99, describes the population projections that underlie the long-range cost estimates for the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program, which are included in the 1987 Report of the OASDI Board of Trustees. The projections start from a recent estimate of the population in the Social Security Area by age, sex, and martial status and from an estimate of existing marriages by age of husband and age of wife. Three separate projections, denoted Alternatives I, II, and III, are developed by analyzing historical data and making three different sets of assumptions about future net immigration, birth rates, and death rates.     

A media violence-inspired juvenile sexual homicide offender 13 years later

No follow-up studies exist on how minors who commit sexual homicides adjust once released back into the community. This is an important question given the extreme nature of their crimes, lack of recidivism data, and the expectation that one-half of them will be freed from prison by mid-life. Likewise, no studies exist on the role our culture's pervasive media violence plays in these offenses. This report describes a 13-year-old boy who committed a witnessed media violence-inspired sexual homicide. Follow-up information is provided on his community adjustment as an adult four years after release from prison. He had multiple indicators of brain dysfunction, and watched a "slasher" film just before committing the blitz style crime upon a female neighbor. Media violence literature is reviewed--against a backdrop of developmental abnormalities, neuropsychiatric vulnerabilities, family dysfunction, and mental illness. This case illustrates how the confluence of such variables, combined with the tinder of erotic screen violence, may lead to sexual murder.     

Unwanted children: Political violence and the cycle of protest in Italy, 1966–1973

Abstract. The article focuses on the cycle of protest that developed in Italy during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Some hypotheses on the evolution of the repertoires of action are tested with the aim of explaining the emergence of political violence during a cycle of protest. Newspaper-based data are presented on the proportional presence of violent forms of action, on the social and ideological groups involved in political violence, and on the grievances expressed during violent protests. The widespread political violence that developed in Italy in the early 1970s is explained as an internally differentiated strategic adaptation within the social movement sector, during a cycle of protests that was disorderly but far from violent.     

“State ineffectiveness in deterring organized crime style homicide in Mexico: a vicious cycle”

Institutional weaknesses in the criminal justice system (limited court capacity and the increasingly sophisticated armament of splintering drug trafficking organizations) limit the effectivity of Mexican states to deter organized crime style homicide. Court capacity, expressed by increasing sentencing rates in states where the oral court system was institutionalized, remains insufficient against the post-2006 organized crime related homicide epidemic. The illegal arms market, combined with long-standing deficits in firepower between organized crime and municipal police forces, limit the state’s capacity to alter the arms balance toward policing forces. Taken together, limited court capacity and the tactical imbalance of weapons held by drug trafficking organizations create a vicious cycle which continually perpetuates state ineffectiveness to deter and punish organized crime style homicide.