Describes the rationale for and approach to a study of homicide in 8 U.S. Cities -- Atlanta, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, New Orleans, Richmond, Tampa, and Washington, D.C. -- that experienced different trends in homicide from 1985 through 1994. Begins with a focus on the community, using homicide as the "dependent variable" in the project's inquiry into context, policy, and homicide. Describes the project design and provides additional information on the hypotheses investigated, interview development and testing, and site selection. Also presents an analysis of the homicide trends in the selected cities. Includes a summary of key policy findings.
Analysts have long noted that some societies have much higher rates of criminal violence than others. They have also observed that the risk of being a victim or a perpetrator of violent crime varies considerably from one individual to another. In societies with ethnically and racially diverse populations, some ethnic and racial groups have been reported to have higher rates of violent offending and victimization than other groups. This series of essays explores the extent and causes of racial and ethnic differences in violent crime in the United States and several other contemporary societies.
Most murderers and rapists escape justice, a horrifying fact that has gone largely unexamined until now. This groundbreaking book tours nearly the entire criminal justice system, examining the rules and practices that regularly produce failures of justice in serious criminal cases. Each chapter outlines the nature and extent of justice failures in present practice, describing the interests at stake, and providing real-world examples. Finally, each chapter reviews proposed and implemented reforms that could balance the competing interests in a less justice-frustrating manner and recommends one—sometimes completely original—reform to improve the system. A systematic study of justice failures is long overdue. As this book discusses, regular failures of justice in serious criminal cases undermine deterrence and the criminal justice system’s credibility with the community as a moral authority. The damage caused by unpunished crime is immense and, even worse, falls primarily on vulnerable minority communities. Now for the first time, students, researchers, policymakers, and citizens have a resource that explains why justice failures occur and what can be done about them. Confronting Failures of Justice is accessible for use by college freshman through graduate students and law students and is designed to be main text for a course on justice failures, but it could be used in conjunction with other texts in a broad range of courses touching on criminal justice. It presents arguments in a highly-organized fashion and provides dozens of case studies, many with photographs, to gain student interest and to bring the academic discussions to life.
A set of chapters prepared by leading figures currently engaged in the study of homicide. Each chapter provides a review and summary of research literatures that deal with social theories of homicide, methodological problems in the study of homicide research among specific groups, and public policy reactions designed to prevent homicide.
