Executive Summary
On June 9 COSSA held a congressional briefing, "Controlling Violence in America," before a standing-room only crowd that included Federal agency officials, congressional staffers, and Representative Bobby Scott (D-VA), member of the House Judiciary Committee. Two noted criminologists discussed handgun violence in America, interpersonal domestic violence, and rampage killings.
Alfred Blumstein, Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Director of the National Consortium on Violence Research (NCOVR), and COSSA President, examined trends in homicide rates over the last two decades and offered explanations for the sharp increase between the mid 1980s and the early- 1990s. He offered explanations for the decrease experienced since the mid-1990s and provided policy prescriptions that might contribute to continued low rates of homicides in the United States.
Between 1985 and the early 1990s the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report (UCR) data showed a large increase in the Nation's homicide rate. This period, said Blumstein, was followed by a sharp decrease in the rate after 1995. To explain the trend, Blumstein dissagreated the homicide rate by age-specific murder arrest rates for 18, 20, 22, and 24 year olds and by weaponry (handguns, other guns, and non-guns).
He showed that between 1985 and 1993-94 the rise in the Nation's homicide rate was driven primarily by juveniles (18 years old) arrested for murder. The homicide arrest rate for this group increased to nearly 60 per 100,000 population in 1993-94 from roughly 23 per 100,000 population in 1985. Over this same period, Blumstein showed that the number of handgun homicides committed by juveniles younger than 18 more than quadrupled to nearly 900 in 1993-94 from roughly 200 in 1985. Blumstein suggested that "handguns had shown up in the hands of young people who didn't know how to deal with them." Older people, he said, may have had more handguns during this period, but they knew how to deal with them. The major thrust of this data, said Blumstein, is that young people (18 years old or less) with handguns led the rise in the Nation's homicide rate.
After 1995 that rate experienced a sharp decline that has continued through subsequent years. Blumstein attributed the decline to policy initiatives designed to take the guns out of the hands of those who could not use them. He pointed to the Brady Bill and increased police aggressiveness in taking guns out of circulation as two examples of policies that contributed to the decline in the homicide rate. Declining drug markets, especially for crack cocaine, said Blumstein, also contributed to this decline. He explained that the Nation's robust economy was also a factor, because "a legitimate job provides a strong incentive for conformity."
Interpersonal Domestic Violence
Laura Dugan, Georgia State University Professor and NCOVR researcher, led a discussion on interpersonal domestic violence. Her talk centered around a research project funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) designed to determine which "exposure reduction" policies have been effective in reducing intimate partner homicides.
Like the Nation's overall homicide rate, the rate of intimate partner homicide has declined over the last two decades, according to Dugan. A recent report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, said Dugan, showed that the intimate partner homicide rate had declined 39 percent between 1976 and 1998. During this same period, she said, the number of resources available to women or persons who had been victimized or abused by their intimate partner had "increased tremendously."
The decline has not been equal across different victim types. For instance, Dugan explained that the rate for intimate partner homicides for black married males as victims dropped by 87 percent between 1976 and 1996. More women, however, were killed in 1996 by their unmarried partners than in 1976. These differences and other disparities, said Dugan, lead to the question: Is there something that is helping to save the lives of some intimates but not necessarily saving the lives of others?
Dugan suggested that "exposure reduction" policies, including women's increased participation in the labor force, services for domestic violence victims, Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) benefits, and legal advocacy services, benefitted some groups of individuals more than others. Dugan focused her comments on the impact of AFDC benefits, which was replaced in the 1996 welfare reform bill by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, and legal advocacy services, which help victims navigate through the legal system to obtain protection from abusive partners.
With respect to AFDC, Dugan noted that in areas with higher AFDC benefits fewer black unmarried males, white unmarried males, and black unmarried females were killed. There was no association, she said, between AFDC benefits and unmarried white females. Legal advocacy services, she said, had differing impacts for white and black women. For instance, white married women experienced a decreased homicide rate as legal advocacy services were strengthened, while rates of intimate partner homicide for black women were unaffected by the strength of these services.
Dugan's research, which she conducted with Carnegie Mellon University Professor Daniel Nagin and University of Missouri, St. Louis Professor Richard Rosenfeld, will be published soon by the NIJ. Check out NIJ's web site for the final version. www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij.
Rampage Killings
Fox Butterfield, noted New York Times crime reporter, was scheduled to discuss his research on rampage killings. However, due to a medical emergency, Butterfield could not attend the briefing. Instead, Blumstein, after consulting with Butterfield, spoke on this provocative topic.
Butterfield, along with several other Times reporters, wrote a series on rampage killers that appeared in the newspaper several months ago. Butterfield and his colleagues compiled information on 100 rampage killers. Blumstein's comments revolved around some of their striking observations.
Rampage killers, according to Blumstein, are those who over a relatively short period of time kill multiple individuals. One striking characteristic of the 100 rampage killers studied by the Times, said Blumstein, is that over half suffered from some form of mental illness. Half of the rampage killers documented by the Times were treated for mental illness, while the other 50 percent were either mentally ill and not treated or not mentally ill. Under Federal law it is illegal to sell a gun to an individual who has been committed to a mental institution. However, a common thread of recent rampage killings is the use of high-powered weaponry. This suggests, said Blumstein, that information regarding mental illness is not always available to effectuate the denials. Blumstein concluded that some steps should be taken to ensure that guns are not placed in the hands of a high-risk population like the mentally ill.
The rampage killers series is available on the Times web site at: www.nytimes.com. COSSA plans to produce a full edited transcript of the briefing which will be available in August.
For a copy of the transcript, send your name and address to info@cossa.org.