Murder: Social And Sociological Perspective

It is shown that areas in Chicago that have higher poverty levels have consequently higher homicide rates. For example, the area of Fuller Park, the poverty levels are at 56% and the homicide rates in this area are 63 per 100,000 people. On the other hand, in Mount Greenwood, where the poverty levels are at 3%, the homicide rates are 2 in 100,000 people. This shows that with increasing poverty levels come increased homicide rates. Poverty has such a big impact on the homicide levels in Chicago is for many reasons. One of these reasons is because many homicides are poverty on poverty homicides, as many people living in poverty in Chicago are easily caught up in violent crime. This happens because they are unemployed or without a home, so turning to gangs and a life of violent crime gives them a place to belong. Poverty is one of the main roots of the crime problem in Chicago, but the city council are unable to admit it. Therefore, instead of jobs and anti-poverty strategies being used to try and stop the violence, repression and moralism are being used to hopefully stop all the crime. Concentrated urban poverty often leads to violence, and many communities within Chicago fall into this spectrum. Concentrated urban poverty is defined as

In some point in literature and society, it is justified to abolish biased views on genes and bloodshed, and to rather condemn crime and homicide as a “social construct”. Studies conducted by Oxford Law Society, suggest that when criminal (when child) deprive through trauma, anxiety, and distress from incidents of slaughter or abuse from school or another environment (in poverty), it gets to such an horrific extent, that the criminal can’t cope with the antisocial and violent thoughts), that they compel into alcohols and drugs, leading to drug abuse and in some times, rape. It is also suggested that behaviour that correlates to crime and homicide is defined as cognitive content and the person’s past trauma and social status leads them into

Rebenstein and Ziewaxz (2014) explain how Detroit has been rated as the world’s most miserable city. In 2012 Detroit suffered 411 homicides, which was higher than in 1974 when Detroit was designated as the murder capital of the United States (p. 340). What causes all of these horrible things to happen in a city? Can the blame be placed solely on one people group? Policemen? Politicians? Teachers? Economic decline? Determining the blame for the current plight of Detroit is a very complex question that cannot be given a simple answer. Similar to the discussion regarding who was to blame for the Detroit Riots, no one person or area can be blamed for the city’s history and current state. It is clear through the textbook readings that multiple factors

During ancient times and the Middle Ages, crime was basically a rural problem rather than a urban problem and it wasn’t until after the 1960s in the United States that urban rates for homicide exceeded those of rural areas. In Canada, the rural homicide rate still exceeded the urban rate in the 1970 and a number of studies have shown that countries with greater inequalities in income distribution have higher murder rates. In the Unites States, racial disparity is highest in arrest rates for crimes of violence and the arrest rate for blacks is about eight times the rate of whites.

In conclusion, it has been demonstrated the social construction of the lawful and unlawful homicide by using the actions of the police officers in two different cases. In the Mark Duggan case, the lawfulness of the homicide was demonstrated by police officer complying with the theoretical outlooks of Beccaria and Durkheim (Williams, 2012). Protecting the people and their cultural biases, applying the punishment that straightens the social bonds as well as following laws and legislations despite of unwanted reaction in from of riots portray Mark Duggan’s killing as a lawful homicide (IPCC (a), 2015). However, if laws and legislations were not followed and actions were not aimed to protect people which led to a break in social bonds the reasonable

The city of Chicago, Illinois is facing a crisis in regards to gun violence. This pervasive issue affects the city as whole, but ripples violently through Chicago’s neighborhoods with lower socioeconomic status. While this form of violence in Chicago has been a problem for decades, 2016 was a “devastatingly violent year” as 762 people were murdered in the city (Sweeney, Schmadeke, & Meisner, 2017, p. 1). The city of Chicago has a population of 2.7 million people, which is about three times lower than that of New York City. Despite the smaller population size, the FBI and Chicago police data show that Chicago registered more shootings and homicides in 2016 than any other U.S. city. This paper will aim to provide context

Research also highlight that middle class crime is the most popular while lower class neighborhoods are deteriorating. This paper will focus on "A General Theory of Crime" using

A special report made by Chicago Magazine, “The Truth About Chicago’s Crime Rates”, informs about the way authorities in the city had in recent year reclassify crime rates through the manipulation of statistics. The article investigates specific cases of murders that occurred in Chicago’s South and West side neighborhoods. In July 2013, Tiara Groove, a 20-year old black African American from South Austin, was found dead inside a warehouse, “Her face and body were bloated and badly decomposed”, and a thin and brown wire “was wrapped around each armrest of a wooden chair next to her flesh”. Despite the pathologist not been able to find the exact cause of the death, it was indicated that it had been a homicide; but, the CPD did not counted as a murder and classified the case as “noncriminal death investigation”. This would be the onset of other similar cases that were investigated by the Chicago Magazine’s

Homicides are the leading cause of death among children in Washington, D.C. than any other crime. There are three main factors causing this problem. Firstly, American is easy to get guns and firearms. Since almost anyone in the United States can buy a gun, the number of crime has increased. Secondly, drugs, which one factor that play a particularly strong role in the relationship to the violent crime in American cities. Lastly, the excessive poverty, which causes negative impacts on many people, is associated with the amount of crime. The solutions to reduce violent crime are getting more education, stricter gun laws and tighten controls on

They may be used to create estimates and probability models, to promote risk assessment, to create knowledge about long-term crime trends, to establish recommendations for public policy, and to establish crime prevention strategies. Thus, governmental reports and statistics of crime constitute an invaluable tool in the study of criminology and they should be used by criminologists to assist them in their academic endeavors and the generation of criminological theory. However, it is essential for criminologists to be aware of the shortcomings of governmental reports. For example, the Uniform Crime reports only records the most serious crime even if “multiple crimes are committed during the same criminal incident” (Pazzani & Tita, 2009, p. 377). The dark numbers of crime is yet another weakness of governmental reports, as those crimes that are not reported to the police and the FBI are not represented in the statistics and reports, and may thus not represent

Homicide rates were up at their highest in the Unites States and California prior to 1994. Around 1994, after the enactment of this law California and the United States showed a major decline in homicide. (Zimring, p.153)

Over the course of the past fifty years there have been countless homicides across the entirety of the United States, all with their own purpose and methods of commission. While it is impossible to completely prevent homicides from happening in our current society by looking at the data as a whole and analyzing the various patterns and trends it follows we might be better able to explain and understand it. With understanding comes new ways of prevention and deterrence that should allow us to significantly decrease the rate of homicides in our nation for future generations to come. To demonstrate this, we will be looking at two datasets one of the National homicide rates of 1950-2010 and another dataset of homicide and Non-Negligent Manslaughter

As a society, we are obsessed with murder and we strive to understand why it occurs. In order to understand why murders occur one must understand the motivations present and be able to classify them as instrumental or expressive. In the case of Joseph Ortiz, a member of the 500 Block street gang, he was motivated to kill by gain and anger. When applying criminological theories one must consider all aspects of the case at hand. No perfect theory exists to explain every homicide.

Applying Weber’s theories, murder goes beyond the act of killing another: the social phenomena is a result of combined inequalities, or seemed inequalities, that permeate themselves through the structures of power and conflict. The story of Cain and Abel is one of the earliest accounts of homicide, and the Roman Republic viewed homicide as a family matter, not one that needed government intervention. Throughout history, homicide has shifted as power and conflict have held different connotations, the understanding allowing murder to be seen differently today. “Homicides, as well as other negative interactions such as hostile takeovers or warfare, may require a reformulation and interpretation of standard network measures of centrality, power, and cohesive subgroupings”, Andrew Papachristos proposes in Murder by Structure: Dominance Relations and the Social Structure of Gang Homicide (121). Conflict and power are two integral ideas that shape everyday life and help give meaning to seemingly incomprehensible acts, such as homicide. Historically, murder was an issue of dominance, as “[d]isputes about honor and reputation [were] ultimately founded on issues of dominance—that is, claims between disputants concerning who lords power or status over whom” (80). Today, the same idea holds true as power leads to conflict and vice versa. M. Smith and M. Zahn in Homicide: A Sourcebook of Social Research describe homicides as “extreme manifestations of interpersonal conflict and, for that

Big cities also have so many distractions that can over stimulate our minds, making us nearly numb to the individuals around us and making us think more logically. The development of technology has the same effect on us. Therefore, it is theorized that ‘the metropolis mental life is essentially intellectual, not emotional’ (Cultural Reader, ‘Georg Simmel- The Metropolis and Mental life- Summary’, 2004). Based on this, when it comes to Kitty Genovese’s murder, it could be conceived that intelligence trumped emotion that night and the witnesses decided to choose the smarter, safer choice of not intervening, rather than the emotional and emphatic response of getting