STRUCTURAL INEQUALITY AND HOMICIDE: AN ASSESSMENT OF THE BLACK‐WHITE GAP IN KILLINGS*

This paper examines the relationship between race and violent crime by directly modeling the racial gap in homicide offending for large central cities for 1990. We evaluate the role of black‐white differences in aspects of both disadvantage and resources in explaining which places have wider racial disparities in lethal violence. The results show that where residential segregation is higher, and where whites' levels of homeownership, median income, college graduation, and professional workers exceed those for blacks to a greater degree, African Americans have much higher levels of homicide offending than whites. Based on these results, we conclude that the racial homicide gap is better explained by the greater resources that exist among whites than by the higher levels of disadvantage among blacks.     

Zimbabwe black population data on the six short tandem repeat loci – CSF1PO, TPOX, THO1, D3S1358, VWA and FGA

Allele frequencies for six tetrameric short tandem repeat (STR) loci CSF1PO, TPOX, THO1, D3S1358, VWA, and FGA were determined in a Black African sample population from Zimbabwe. All loci are highly polymorphic and meet Hardy-Weinberg expectations. An inter-class correlation test analysis detected only one departure from independence out of 15 pair-wise comparisons of the six loci (i.e., CSF1PO/VWA loci, P=0.026). The allele frequency data at four of the six STR loci in the Black African sample population are similar to African American data.     

Postmortem interval estimation by creatinine levels in human psoas muscle.

A new method was tested for estimating time after death in the middle range of postmortem interval (weeks). Creatinine muscular concentration in human cadaver is positively correlated to postmortem estimation. Temperature should be mainly related to the creatinine transformation rate. A stronger correlation was found at 11 degrees C up to 30 days and at 20 degrees Celsius up to 15 days.