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This study considers the degree to which the crime rates of US cities follow a uniform national trend. A nationwide trend has consequences for theories that explain aggregate changes in crime, but how closely subnational units hold to a common time path has received almost no research attention. Using annual panel data, the current study presents analyses that attempt to measure the correspondence between city-level and national-level crime rates. The results of each analysis are consistent with a clear single pattern that operates across the nation's major urban areas. This supports the idea that a meaningful national trend exists, and it suggests the desirability of continuing efforts to explain it.

Objectives. To examine levels and temporal changes in the frequency of defensive gun use by US crime victims. Methods. We computed national-level counts of criminal incidents involving firearm defense during 3 periods: 1993 to 2005, 2007 to 2015, and 2016 to 2021. We also considered earlier national estimates for 1987 to 1990. The data came from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). We counted firearm defenses as incidents in which victims used a gun to threaten or attack an offender. Results. Over the 4 periods, for all crimes, victims reported gun defenses in an average range of between 61 000 and 65 000 incidents per year. This included between 38 000 and 53 000 personal (violent) incidents and between 12 000 and 23 000 household (property) incidents. Conclusions. Firearm defenses occurred at a relatively low and nearly constant level over the 35-year period. Although some victims use guns for defense, these uses are infrequent compared with the incidence of crime. Public Health Implications. The continuing relative rarity of NCVS armed defenses suggests that claims about the protective benefits of widespread firearm ownership may be overstated. ( Am J Public Health. 2024;114(12):1384–1387. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2024.307838 )

Seasonal crime patterns have been a topic of sustained criminological research for more than a century. Results in the area are often conflicting, however, and no firm consensus exists on many points. The current study uses a long time series and a large areal sample to obtain more detailed seasonality estimates than have been available in the past. The findings show that all major crime rates exhibit seasonal behavior, and that most follow similar cycles. The existence of seasonal patterns is not explainable by monthly temperature differences between areas, but seasonality and temperature variations do interact with each other. These findings imply that seasonal fluctuations have both environmental and social components, which can combine to create different patterns from one location to another.

Collectively researchers are ambivalent about the use of Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) data. On the one hand, the most consistent theme in textbooks and professional discussions of the quality of crime statistics is that the UCR data are invalid and should not be used as an indicator of criminal behavior. The critical voices go back to the origins of the UCR program and are directed at both the use of police records in general and the UCR in particular.

BY any measure, firearms — especially handguns — are a leading instrument of violent injury. In 1987, firearms accounted for 32,919 fatalities in the United States: 18,144 suicides, 12,665 homicides, and 2110 unintentional fatalities, legal interventions (killings by law-enforcement officials), or deaths of undetermined type. 1 Sixty percent of all homicides and suicides during this year were committed with guns, 1 and handguns accounted for three fourths of the homicides by firearms. 2 A central question in research on the prevention of gunrelated mortality is whether restricting access to handguns would reduce deaths by firearms. 3 One approach to the issue is to examine . . .

Objectives. This study assessed the consistency of estimates of the number of justifiable homicides committed by US police officers and identified sources of underreporting. Methods. The number of justifiable homicides committed by police officers between 1976 and 1998 was estimated from supplementary homicide report (SHR) and National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) mortality data. Results. Nationally, the SHR estimate was 29% larger than the NVSS estimate. However, in most states this pattern was reversed, with more deaths reported in the NVSS. Conclusions. Both systems underreport, but for different reasons. The NVSS misclassifies cases as homicides, rather than justifiable homicides committed by police officers, because certifiers fail to mention police involvement. The SHR misses cases because some jurisdictions fail to file reports or omit justifiable homicides committed by police officers. (Am J Public Health. 2003;93:1117–1121)

Replication of the Nisbett-Reaves test of the herding-culture-of-honor hypothesis fails to support expectations derived from Nisbett's culture-of-honor theory. The theory predicts that violent culture has economic advantage in frontier areas with herding economies, because there is a chronic threat of livestock theft. Nisbett and Reaves hypothesize that rural counties in the South, where ecological conditions promote livestock herding will have especially high white non-Hispanic male homicide rates. Our statistical analysis reproduces the mean homicide rates reported by previous research, but indicates that they are artifacts of skewed distributions, unreliable estimates of homicide rates, and the failure to control for differences in the distribution of white poverty.

Analyses \"Florida's version of the (Felony Firearm) law by examining its effect on violent crime in three cities in that state\".

Estimates of the incidence of victim gun use from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) are consistently lower than are those from other studies. To examine the divergence, we conducted a survey that gauged the impact of methodological differences between the NCVS and the other studies. For half of the sample, we asked questions from the NCVS, followed by questions from the other surveys. For the other half of the sample, we presented the questions in the reverse order. We examined two hypotheses: (1) survey methods account for the divergent results, and (2) the questions cover unrelated activities. The results provided some support for the first hypothesis, but respondents also reported many more defenses to the questions from the other surveys than to the NCVS questions. Consistent with the second hypothesis, this suggests that the NCVS and the other surveys measure responses to largely different provocations.