Crimes, such as homicide and aggravated assault are considered as one of the most serious crimes in that homicide entails depriving individuals of their life while aggravated assault entails attempts of depriving individuals of their life or even the intention of causing serious injuries to them (Putkonen et al 52). Over the years, vast analysis of the act of homicide has been conducted where a formulation of a series of hypothesis regarding the nature of the act of homicides entailed testing them through the use of police homicide data and hence the establishment of patterns in criminal justice. Similarly, studies based on investigations conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation indicated classifications on the crime of aggravated assault in terms of assault with the intention of killing or for the purpose of inflicting severe bodily injury through shooting, stabbing, cutting, poisoning, just to mention but a few. This paper will focus on determining prevalent patterns between homicide offenders and characteristics based on age, race and sex. It will also attempt to determine the correlation with homicide rates compared to the assault rates. However, the determination of these elements will involve an emphasis on percentage rates that occur on the basis of the characteristics.
To start with, the vulnerability to violent crime victimization involves variations through the age spectrum where the rate of these instances significantly increases through teenage years and accelerates at the age 20 and above. The pattern in these occurrences entails existence across characteristics such as age, race and sex (Putkonen et al 53) .Some of the homicide crimes include, rape, sexual assault, robbery and aggravated assault. According t...
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...ve a higher likelihood of committing homicide on other ethnic groups due to disregard in their societal rate.
Further studies indicate that instances of homicide based on ethnicity that occurred in 2009 significantly increased for white people while a reduction occurred for black people.
The reduction of these instances saw a significant reduction in the rate of homicide attacks propagated by black people while white people experienced an increase that indicated disparity in the cultural elements (Chan, Eric, and Wade70). Mostly, men from the African American community indicated a higher rate of homicide attacks as compared to women in that they would attack people in public places or even get attacked. On the other hand, white men indicated increased attacks on other communities. Women indicated relatively lower instances of homicide in the ethnic communities.
“A report by the United States General Accounting Office in 1990 concluded that 82 percent of the empirically valid studies on the subject show that the race of the victim has an impact on capital charging decisions or sentencing verdicts or both” (86).
In 2012, there were an estimated 14,827 murders and non-negligent manslaughter crimes reported by all agencies in the United States according to the Uniform Crime Report at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Murder and non-negligent manslaughter are defined “as the willful (nonnegligent) killing of one human being by another.” A 1.1 percent increase occurred from 2011 to 2012. But it should be noted, this is a 9.9 percent drop from the figure for 2008 and a 10.3 percent decrease from the number of murders recorded in 2003. Of the murders that occurred in 2012, it is estimated that 43.6 percent were reported in the south, 21.0 percent were from the Midwest, 21.0 percent were accounted from the west, and 14.2 percent were from the northeast of the United States. There were 4.7 murders for every 100,000 people in 2012. The murder rate went up 0.4 percent from 2011 to 2012. It went down in 2008 by 12.8 percent and dropped 16.9 percent from 2003. The majority of offenders were over the age of eighteen and they accounted for 9,096 of offenders in 2012. According to the Uniform Crime Report, the number of offenders who murdered in 2012 totaled 14,581. The majority of these offenders were male, totaling 9,425. Female offenders totaled 1,098, and 4,058 were unknown offenders. Black males topped the list as far as race was concerned with 5,531 committing murder. White males followed with 4,582 offenders. There were 4,228 classified as race unknown regarding offenders who murdered in 2012. The victim data reported was 9,917 male victims and 2,834 female victims. Of those victims, 11,549 were over the age of eighteen.
Crime has always been a hot topic in sociology. There are many different reasons for people to commit criminal acts. There is no way to pinpoint the source of crime. I am going to show the relationship between race and crime. More specifically, I will be discussing the higher chances of minorities being involved in the criminal justice system than the majority population, discrimination, racial profiling and the environment criminals live in.
Relatively high rates of violence have been reported over the years among members of certain ethnic and racial groups and urban inhabitants. African Americans and Native Americans have comparatively high rates of assaultive interpersonal violence and homicide. Big cities continue to experience high rates of violence, focussed mainly among young black males in the United States.
67. Politicians, responding to the nations fear of crime, have attempted to outdo each other in being “tougher of crime”. This attention toward our nations fear of crime has resulted in the addition of police officers, the building of more prisons, extending the death penalty to cover sixty federal offenses, and mandating longer sentences. The homicide rate in the United States was more than twice the homicide rate in Canada and many times that in other countries. However, the victimization rates for assault and robbery were lower for Americans than for Canadians, Australians, and Spaniards. Outbreaks of violence have occurred throughout history starting with the post-Civil War era. This was eventually followed by organized crime and an increase in the murder rate throughout the 1930’s. During the 1950’s crime rates decreased only to increase once again in the 1980’s. Today crime rates are down whether Americans choose to accept this or not. Murder rates are well below the record setting 1930’s and violent crime has decreased 33 % since 1993.
The Uniform Crime Report, which was developed in the 1930s, is commonly used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a record of crimes committed all across the United States. These crimes, which fall under two categories, Part I and Part II offenses, are reported by local police to the Federal Bureau of Investigation each year. Part I offenses are considered to be the more serious of crimes recognized by society. Such examples of this are homicide, forcible rape, robbery, arson, motor vehicle theft, etc. Part II offenses are those that are considered less serious, such as fraud, simple assault, drug abuse, gambling, stolen property, embezzlement, etc. Part I crimes can also be subdivided into what are known as violent crimes and property crimes. (Barkan, 2012). However, there are both some positive and negative aspects of this type of crime measurement. The following paper will explore the small amount of pros and numerous cons associated with the Uniform Crime Report.
Sadly, there is some reasoning as to why society perceives young black males as stereotypically violent people. Alvin Thomas, a psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, elucidates that “high arrest rates are used as an indicator for defining African American males as more aggressive and more violent than males from any other ethnic group” (Thomas). However, explanations for this higher percentage in arrest rates include “environmental factors, such as the industrial shift of the 1980s, the dynamic blending of race, the legal system, the community and the individual, and the influence of family structure”. These influencing components are possible variables that account for either direct or indirect causes of the disproportional representation of African Americans in crime statistics and a rationale as to why they can be considered invalid. Additional possible reasons as to why black males are perceived as violent individuals lie within the ways in which they are killed. Black males and females are “six times more likely than whites to die by homicide”. To account for this statistic, Racine Renee Henry and Senem Zeytinoglu, couple and family therapists at Drexel
From the origins of criminal victimization, we begin with blaming the offended. (Silverii). Still what is more baffling is to question whether or not it is one's duty to make sure victims won't be victimized again or if victims of a crime that are unreported should even be considered victims. There are three main issues that are provided through victimology and these are context, connections, and investigative direction (Turvey). Most victims are not just victims they're perceived by a criminal as an ideal victim. An ‘ideal victim’ is someone who has played no part in their victimization by an offender who was solely responsible for the incident. In the early 1970s, research by the National Opinion Research Center and the President's Commission on Law Enforcement, and the Administration of Justice indicated that many crimes were not reported to police. A lot of times victims are not prepared for the insensitive and unpleasant treatment they may incur from the police, hospitals, and judicial system. In response, the U.S. Census Bureau began conducting the annual National Crime Victimization Survey in 1973. The survey provides the largest national forum for victims to describe the impact of crime and characteristics of violent offenders. The data includes type of crime, month, time, and location of the crime; relationship between victim and offender; characteristics of the offender; self-protective actions taken by the victim during the incident and results of those actions; consequences of the victimization; type of property lost; whether the crime was reported to the police and reasons for reporting or not reporting; and offender use of weapons, drugs, and alcohol.
98 percent of mass murderers are men. According to Time in 2014, almost all rampage killers are men.This statistic startled me as I read "Toxic Masculinity and Murder" by James Hamblin of The Atlantic. In essence, this one figure demonstrates that masculinity is "a more common feature than any of the elements that tend to dominate discourse—religion, race, nationality, political affiliation, or any history of mental illness."
However, long-term trends following murder rates from 1900-2010 show some blatantly different information. Consider Figure 4.1 box in the class text. It illustrates the trends murder has taken in the US over decades. When numbers of murders first began being tracked in the 1900s it seemed that murder was rather low and stayed at about the same rate for a few years with less than two hundred murders per 100,000 persons. Unfortunately, despite this beginning things started changing rapidly about 1905. Murder started taking an upward climb at an alarming rate, peaking somewhere around 1935 numbering almost 1,000 murders per 100,000 people. From this graph one would question what happened during these years to precipitate such a jump.
The dependent variables were dummy variables of violent crime victim and burglary victim. Independent variables included the necessary individual-level characteristics such as age, gender, race, home statue and so on; contextual characteristics including number of places nearby, ethic heterogeneity and neighborhood incivilities were also included. The findings showed that contextual characteristics of the community not only showed strong direct influence on the violent/burglary victimization, but also indicated that the contextual conditions would influence the effects of individual-level risk factors. It seems that individual-level factors can be conditioned by the neighborhood
The poor are more likely to be victims of crime. They are far more likely to be victims of violent crime, while the middle class are more likely to be victims of property crime. African Americans are victimized at the highest rates. Crime tends to be intra-racial criminals and victims of the same race rather than interracial criminal and victim of different races. About 75% of crime is intra-racial. Strangers commit about 60% of violent crimes. However, females are more likely to know their assailants. In some studies, over half of offenders report being under the influence of alcohol and/or other drugs when they committed the offense (Roberts,
Duncan, Birt L. "Differential Social Perception And Attribution Of Intergroup Violence: Testing The Lower Limits Of Stereotyping Of Blacks." Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology 34.4 (1976): 590-598. PsycARTICLES. Web. 29 Nov. 2013.
Victimology is the scientific study of victimization and is an issue that affects millions of Americans each year. Anyone is at risk to be general target, but some people share similar traits and many criminologists seek to explain the facts that define the relationship between offender and the victim. This involves the study or investigation into the relationship type and level between the offenders and the victims of the crimes (Hagan, 2013). It works to create linkage between the criminal justice system and the victim to become a voice to advocate and secure justice for the victim. Most often violent crime is planned and executed by a person who is close to the victim. Victims are placed into four categories of victimization; The Victim
The U.S. Department of Labor (2011) reported the national average of unemployment for 2008 was 5.8 percent. The rate dramatically increased in 2009 with an average of 9.3 percent and 9.6 percent for 2010. While unemployment rates have increased, the FBI’s preliminary reports for 2010 show that law enforcement agencies across the U.S. have reported a decrease of 6.2 percent in the number of violent crimes for the first 6 months of 2010 when compared to figures reported for the same time in 2009. The violent crime category includes rape, murder, robbery, and aggravated result. The number of property crimes also decreased 2.8 percent when compared to the same time last year. Property crimes include burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft. Arson decreased 14.6 percent when compared to the same time periods of 2009 (FBI, 2011).