Definitions
In general usage, serious violent crime consists of the crimes of murder/non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Other behaviors have been defined as serious violent crimes, including everything from terrorism to the sale of drugs, but these are usually merely different classifications of the four major types just listed.
Murder and non-negligent manslaughter involve the criminal killing of a human being. As reported in the Uniform Crime
Reports (UCR), this category does not include attempted murder, nor does it include noncriminal homicides, so self-defense, justifiable homicide, capital punishment, and combat deaths do not fall under this category. The essential features defining murder and non-negligent manslaughter are intent and premeditation. When both intent and premeditation are present, the homicide is classified by the UCR as murder. When there is intent to kill, or an awareness at the point of attack that one’s actions could have a lethal outcome, but no premeditation, the homicide is classified as non-negligent manslaughter. These distinctions are standardized for these definitions through the reporting standards of the UCR, and the specific name of the crime varies by jurisdiction, so that non-negligent manslaughter may be murder two, manslaughter, voluntary manslaughter, non-negligent manslaughter, or any other name within a particular state.
Rape, as defined in the Uniform Crime Reports, is the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will. In this UCR classification, as in all others except murder, assaults are included. Because this definition is based on the common law definition of rape and is limited to females, states have passed laws creating the category of sexual assault. Sexual assault brings a broader range of sexual behaviors under its umbrella, and covers male victims as well as female victims.
Robbery involves taking something from someone by the use of force, the threat of force, or putting the victim in fear for themselves or another. While it involves a theft, it is necessarily a confrontational crime and requires that the victim and offender be in some direct contact. As a consequence, although one may speak of a bank being robbed late at night, or a house being robbed when no one is home, these do not constitute robbery as legally defined and are not considered serious violent crimes.
Aggravated assault is a personal attack for the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury. Attempts to cause this degree of injury are also included, so assaults that involve a weapon capable of causing this degree of injury, even if the victim is not so injured, are regularly included. Both aggravated assault and murder involve an attack on another with the potential for a lethal outcome. The attacker seldom has the real ability to control the degree of injury inflicted, so that one of the primary distinctions between these crimes is the lethality of the weapon used. This fact has consequences for theories on these crimes and for practical policies that have reduced the incidence of violent crimes.
Rates and Rate Changes
Rates of specific violent crimes change annually, of course, so for the latest rate information one must refer to the Uniform Crime Reports or to the data available at http://www.fbi.gove under Crime In the United States. However, the rates of all violent crimes displayed the same pattern during the last half of the twentieth century. From 1950 to around 1965 the rate for each of the violent crimes was stable. Around 1965 the rates began a steady increase, which peaked between 1975 and 1980. The rates then showed little variation until around 1990, when they all began to go down steadily. By 2000, murder had reached its 1965 level. Rape, robbery, and aggravated assault all showed exactly the same pattern of increase, stability, and then decline, but never returned fully to their 1965 levels and remain closer to rates found in the 1970s.
This pattern is important because it reflects some of the major features that we believe contribute to violent crime. Chief among these are changes in demographic factors (primarily age composition), and changes in policy and social conditions that have an impact on violent crime. The pattern of these changes also supports the idea based on medical models of disease transmission that violence is somehow ”contagious” within a community. As rates of violent crime increase, they develop their own inertia, and will continue to increase because of that inertia until some other factors intervene to bring a change in the direction of the rates (Loftin 1986; Jones and Jones 2000). If this is true, it suggests that early intervention as violent crimes begin to increase may be critical in preventing their long-term increase.
Major Features of Violent Crime
Every crime is unique, but overall the offenders and victims in violent serious crimes have some significant features in common. Two factors stand out: age and gender. Statistically speaking, violent crime is a young man’s game. Consistently, more than 80% of all violent offenders are male. Also with notable consistency, more than 40% of those arrested for violent crimes are under the age of twenty-five (44.3% in 2003).
Minority groups also tend to have higher rates of violent crime, and one of the major debates in research and theory on violent crime concerns the roles that race, the structure of poverty, and the culture of the South play in violence. Since the 1930s researchers have reached very different, and often contradictory, answers on whether racial and ethnic differences in violent crime are reflections of differing poverty rates among racial and ethnic groups in the United States, or whether those differences reflect a cultural difference in the tolerance or acceptance of violence within the South and populations with Southern origins in other parts of the United States. (Hawley and Messner [1987] provide the best general review of this argument.) Quite simply, there is no definitive answer on this even today, and one has to go to the research and reach an individual conclusion based on reading of that work.
Significant debate also surrounds the role of firearms, and whether either their presence or the nature of the laws regarding them contribute to an increase or a decrease in violent crime. Both sides of the debate, however, agree that firearms are lethal weapons that change the nature of an interpersonal conflict, whether in the hands of the offender or of the potential victim. Although aggravated assault and murder are sibling crimes in that they involve very similar sets of offenders and victims in very similar situations, they are vastly different in weapon involvement, with more than 65% of all murders, but only about a third of aggravated assaults, involving a firearm.
Understanding these characteristics, and how they play out in differing types of violent crimes, provides us with clues as to how to explain and then to reduce violent crime.
Theory and Policy Impacts on Serious Violent Crime
The goal of research, theory, and policy is either to prevent or to reduce the harm produced by violent crime. History teaches us that attempting to prevent all violent crime is an unrealistic goal. The more pragmatic approach is to try to figure out ways to reduce the level of violent crime, or to reduce the harm or damage following from violent crime.
There are a multitude of theories attempting to explain violent criminal behavior on biological, psychological, or sociological frameworks. (Englander [1997] provides a good basic overview.) However, at least one approach, called routine activities theory, does not concern itself with the origin of the violent behavior, but pragmatically considers the structures in which violence is more likely to occur (Cohen and Felson 1979). This theory suggests that violent crime occurs because of the convergence in the same place and at the same time of people with the motivation to commit the crime, suitable victims, and the absence of capable guardians to prevent the crime. Basic police work attempts to place suitable guardians in the right places at the right times, and to remove motivated offenders from the picture. However, there are other ways to prevent this convergence of all the wrong factors. The principle of target hardening in burglary or robbery, for example, reflects this approach by reducing the ”suitability” of victims (see Wright and Decker 1994, 1997). And anything that keeps offenders and potential victims apart in space or in time, that makes targets less suitable, that places capable guardians in the picture, or that reduces the motivation of offenders can have an impact.
The Boston Gun Project is one example of a program that attempts to change the dynamic of motivation, offenders, and structure, in this case by focusing on the role of firearms in increasing the seriousness of violent crimes (Braga et al. 2001). The goal was not to prevent all violent crimes, but rather to form a workable policy to reduce the harm following from levels of violent crime by reducing the use of firearms among problematic groups in the city, and the attempt seems to have paid positive dividends.
In devising policies to reduce the level of violent crime, it helps to remember that violent crime is only one outcome in a situation that could have had a number of other results. Whether those involved in any situation are male or female, young or old, whether they are armed, whether they are drunk, and so on, all change the odds that a situation may result in violence. Obviously, whether the individuals are male or female, young or old, cannot be changed, but police practices that change the probability that one or both of these people will be armed, that they will be drunk, or that they will have no other outlet to settle their dispute can have an impact (White et al. 2003). As a result, policies and practices that address the significant features that increase the probability of violent outcomes can be effective in reducing the occurrence of serious violent crime at every level from political decisions to street level policing.
