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10 J. Res. Crime & Delinquency 1 (1973)

handle is hein.journals/jrcd10 and id is 1 raw text is: 







Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency

VOLUME 10                      JANUARY   1973                   NUMBER 1



         Homicide in Chicago, 1965-1970

                              RICHARD  BLOCK
          Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Loyola University
                       Ph.D., 1969, University of Chicago
                            FRANKLIN  E. ZIMRING
  Professor of Law and Associate Director, Center for Studies in Criminal Justice,
                            University of Chicago
                       J.D., 1967, University of Chicago


         Rates of criminal homicide have been  increasing in many ma-
      jor metropolitan areas. In Chicago from 1965 to 1970; the rate of
      homicides  noted  by the police more  than doubled. A  study of
      patterns  of homicide  during that period  reveals that robbeiy-
      -killings, killings involving younger victims and offenders, group-
      related killings, and gun killings all increased far more substan-
      tially than aggregate homicide rates. Homicide  offense rates for
      black males aged  15-24 almost tripled during the six years, while
      victimization among   the same  group  more  than  tripled. The
      dramatic  increase in robbery  killings appeared to be  but one
      manifestation  of a broader increase in young, group-related, gun
      homicides.


T   HE  MOST  RECENT  GENERATION   Of
    studies  in patterns of  criminal
homicide  has  emphasized  the  static
analysis of police-reported data in ma-
jor American  metropolitan  areas. In-
formation  is gathered on the number
of  homicides  that took  place in  a
given period-either  a year or a series
of years compressed into a single sam-
ple-and   analysis of the data  treats
the different killings in different peri-
ods of time as part of a single observa-
tion of what is implicitly assumed to
be a stable phenomenon.'  Yet, if rates
of criminal  homicide  are used  as a
measure, violent killing in the major


metropolitan  areas  of  the  United
States is anything but a stable phenom-

  1. See, e.g., Marvin E. Wolfgang, Patterns
in Criminal Homicide (Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania, 1958); Palerns in Crim-
inal Homicide in Baltimore (Baltimore: Bal-
timore Crime Commission, 1964); David J.
Pittman and William Handy, Patterns in
Criminal Aggravated Assault, Journal of
Criminal Law,  Criminology and  Police
Science, December 1964, pp. 462-70. Some
earlier sociological work in homicide in the
United States stressed time fluctuations. See,
e.g., Andrew F. Henry and James F. Short,
Suicide and Homicide (New York: Free Press
of Glencoe, 1954) . Classic early investigations
of homicide in Europe stressed analysis of
patterns oset time.


I

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