TAKING A LONGER VIEW: MURDERS IN THE UNITED STATES OVER THE PAST CENTURY
Another aspect of the big picture involves getting a feel for historical trends. Is the level of criminal violence in the United States today far worse or much better than in the distant past? Is the United States becoming a safer place to live or a more dan- gerous society as the decades pass by? Today’s crime problem needs to be seen in a broader context.
Historians write about the carnage of the past, especially when the first European settlers arrived,
and then during the time period of the Thirteen Colonies, the American Revolution, the centuries of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the frontier days of the “Wild West.” But accurate records are hard to find before industrialization took place, cities sprang up, and urban police forces began to guard local residents on a daily basis.
Graphs are particularly useful for spotting his- torical trends at a glance. Trends in homicide rates can be traced further back than changes over time for the other interpersonal crimes.
Murder is the most terrible crime of all because it inflicts the ultimate harm, and the damage cannot be undone.The irreparable loss is also felt by the departed person’s loved ones. But the social reaction to the taking of a person’s life varies dramatically. It is deter- mined by a number of factors: the state’s laws, the offender’s state of mind, the deceased’s possible con- tribution to the escalation of hostilities, the social
NCVSVSV
UCRCRC
F I G U R E 3.3 Trends in Property Crime Rates, United States, 1973–2013 SOURCES: FBI’s UCRs 1973–2013; BJS’s NCVSs 1973–2013.
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standing of each party, where the crime was commit- ted, how the person was dispatched, and whether the slaying attracted media coverage and public outcry. Some murders make headlines, while others slip by virtually unnoticed except by the next of kin. Some killings lead to the execution of the perpetrator; others ruled to be justifiable homicides result in no penalty and possibly even widespread approval.
Homicide is broadly defined as the killing of one human being by another. Not all homicides are pun- ishable murders. All murders are socially defined: How to handle a specific killing is determined by legislators, police officers, and detectives; prosecutors and defense attorneys; judges and juries; and even the media and the public’s reaction to someone’s demise. Deaths caused by carelessness and accidents are not classified as murders (although if the damage was foreseeable, they might be prosecuted as man- slaughters). Acts involving the legitimate use of deadly force in self-defense whether carried out against felons by police officers or by private citizens under attack (see Chapter 13) are also excluded from the body counts, as are court-sanctioned executions.
The law takes into account whether a killing was carried out intentionally (with “express malice”), in a rational state of mind (“deliberate”), and with advance planning (“premeditation”). These defining charac- teristics of first-degree murders carry the most severe punishments, including (depending on the state) exe- cution or life imprisonment without parole. Killing certain people—police officers, corrections officers, judges, witnesses, and victims during rapes, kidnap- pings, or robberies—may also be capital offenses.
A homicide committed with intent to inflict grievous bodily injury (but no intent to kill) or with extreme recklessness (“depraved heart”) is prosecuted as a second-degree murder. A murder in the second degree is not a capital crime and can- not lead to the death penalty.
A homicide committed in the “sudden heat of passion” as a result of the victim’s provocations is con- sidered a “voluntary” (or first-degree) manslaughter. The classic example is the “husband who comes home to find his wife in bed with another man and kills him.” Offenders convicted of manslaughter are pun- ished less severely than those convicted of murder.
A loss of life due to gross negligence usually is handled as an “involuntary” (second-degree) man- slaughter, or it may not be subjected to criminal prosecution at all. Involuntary manslaughter in most states occurs when a person acts recklessly, or appreciates the risk but does not use reasonable care to perform a legal act, or commits an unlawful act that is not a felony and yet a death results.
Some types of slayings have special names (see Holmes, 1994): infanticide (of a newborn by a par- ent), filicide (of a child by a parent or stepparent), parricide (of a parent by a child), eldercide (of an older person), intimate partner homicide (of a spouse or lover), serial killing (several or more vic- tims dispatched one at a time over an extended period), mass murder (several people slaughtered at the same time and place), felony murder (com- mitted during another serious crime, like robbery, kidnapping, or rape), and contract killing (a profes- sional “hit” for an agreed-upon fee).
The UCR has been monitoring murder (com- bined with manslaughter) rates since the beginning of the 1930s, but in the beginning only big-city police departments forwarded their records to FBI headquarters. Fortunately, another source of data is available that is drawn from death certificates (maintained by coroner’s offices, which are called medical examiners offices in some jurisdictions) that list the cause of death. This database, compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics, can be tapped to reconstruct what happened during the earliest years of the twentieth century up to the present. Graphing this data facilitates the identifica- tion of crime waves and spikes but also sharp drops and deep “crashes” in the homicide rate over the decades. Long-term trends can then be considered in context (against a backdrop of major historical events affecting the nation as a whole).