Criminology & Criminal Justice
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Item CHILD ABUSE HOMICIDE INFLICTED BY A CHILD'S CARETAKER: A POTENTIALLY PREVENTABLE TYPE OF CHILD MURDER(2009) Rezey, Maribeth Lorraine; Simpson, Sally S; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Child abuse inflicted by caretakers has been reported the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children. Although researchers have attempted to estimate the rate of child abuse homicide nationwide, its true scope is unknown. Quantifying child abuse homicide is important since this type of homicide is arguably preventable. This study utilizes the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) to analyze child abuse homicides inflicted by the child's caretaker across 17 U.S. states during the years they participated from 2003 to 2005. The NVDRS reports violent death data from multiple official sources, providing this analysis with a more accurate number of child abuse homicides than previously available. In this thesis, I established if the NVDRS ascertains more abuse or non-abuse homicides than death certificates. I reviewed ascertained and misclassified deaths to assess whether a common set of victim or incident characteristics exist across these homicides. A logistic regression was also conducted to examine the probability of child abuse homicide given these characteristics.Item Race, Neighborhood Disadvantage, and Retaliatory Homicide(2005-05-31) Miller, Erin; LaFree, Gary; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Criminologists have long struggled to explain the concentration of violence among economically disadvantaged minorities. Anderson ethnographically develops an explanation of violent behavior among blacks in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. He argues that because these individuals are isolated from mainstream institutions and lack faith in the criminal justice system, they live by a "code of the street" in which violence is used as a tool to maintain respect among peers and deter aggression. The present research is designed to determine whether patterns of homicide in Chicago from 1985 to 1995 support Anderson's theory. I use data on characteristics of homicide offenders and U.S. Census data from 1990 for measures of neighborhood disadvantage at the census tract level. The results generally support Anderson's theory in that homicides committed by blacks and in neighborhoods with greater disadvantage are more likely to be retaliatory than homicides committed by whites and in neighborhoods with less disadvantage.Item GUN ACCESS AND FEMICIDE: A DIFFERENTIAL IMPACT OF FIREARMS ON INTIMATE KILLINGS(2005-05-03) Cross, Amanda Brown; LaFree, Gary; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Studies of intimate partner homicide have repeatedly suggested that gun accessibility increases the risk that a confrontation between intimates will end in the death of one partner, usually the woman. In the larger arena of gun accessibility research, experts have posited opposing conclusions about how gun accessibility affects the risk of homicide in the population overall. This thesis is an attempt to build a bridge between literature linking gun access to increased intimate partner homicide and literature exploring the affect of gun availability on homicide in general. Based on previous research, the current study poses the following hypotheses: (I) Gun accessibility is a stronger predictor of intimate partner homicide than non-intimate partner homicide and (II) Gun accessibility is a stronger predictor of intimate partner homicide of women than intimate partner homicide of men. My analysis is consistent with hypothesis II but offers no support for hypothesis I.