The 2014-2016 Homicide Rise: Introduction to the Special Issue

When the press began reporting homicide increases in the nation’s big cities a few years ago, skeptics claimed that the reports were overblown (Bialik, 2015). The critics were right to question the early reports of a homicide rise, coming as they did on the heels of a long-term crime decline. They were also based on very small samples of cities. Shortly, however, it became apparent that the homicide rise was real, widespread, and, if not unprecedented, large enough to merit attention from policy makers and researchers (Rosenfeld, Gaston, Spivak, & Irazola, 2017). A small research literature on the increase and its implications for crime theory and policy, amply documented in this special issue of Homicide Studies, has emerged over the past few years. The special issue, consisting of five papers by experienced crime researchers, represents an important step forward in understanding the dimensions and some of the sources of the homicide increase from 2014 to 2016.

The first paper, by Rosenfeld and Fox, sets forth some basic descriptive facts about the homicide rise, including homicide changes by race, sex, and age; the relationship between victims and offenders; the circumstances of the killings; and by their regional location, the size of the places where they occurred, and weapon use. The authors conclude that, with two exceptions, the homicide rise was pervasive. Homicides increased among Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics; among persons of nearly all ages; in big cities and rural areas; and across differing types of victim–offender relationships and event circumstances. The exceptions are equally telling. The increase differed by region of the country, with the Midwest, led by Chicago, leading the way. And it was almost entirely confined to killings committed with a firearm. We might consider these findings among the “stylized facts” that McDowall, in the second paper, suggests are needed to profile the recent homicide increase and other crime rate changes over time.

McDowall places the homicide increase in the context of changes over the past half century. He concludes that the 2014-2016 increase was “unusual” but “far from unprecedented.” Still, the increase should be studied, he argues, for what it can tell us not only about the recent past but alterations in crime trends more generally. McDowall does not try to explain the increase, but he does offer very useful recommendations for explanatory research, including the identification of “bell weather” cities that might portend more general changes in crime rates.

The next two papers, by Lauritsen and Lentz and by Berg, address a critically important question about the homicide rise: whether it resulted from the growing “lethality” of violence in the United States. Both papers present evidence supporting the idea, although data limitations preclude either of them from specifying the reasons for the increase in the proportion of violent events that result in homicide.

Lauritsen and Lentz find increased lethality in both national and local data for the city of St. Louis. While they do not believe that lethality itself is an “exogenous shock”—an unexpected or unpredictable event or condition that sparked the homicide rise—they suggest that future research should determine whether the increased lethality of violence conditions the effects on homicide of exogenous shocks such as drug epidemics and declines in police legitimacy. Berg, using victimization data on relatively minor violence as a proxy for “disputes,” concludes that “the United States has become more peaceful, but it disputes have become deadlier.”

Wrapping up the special issue is a paper by Gaston, Cunningham, and Gillezeau that analyzes the contributions to the homicide rise of the opioid epidemic and police violence, especially against minority citizens. The authors find that both conditions played a role in the increase, with the opioid epidemic having an especially strong effect on homicides among Whites and police violence increasing homicide among both White and Black civilians. Moreover, the effects of both conditions are heightened in more disadvantaged areas of the country. This is the first study to estimate the effects of the opioid crisis and the police legitimacy crisis on the homicide rise using the same data and model. It is a strong foundation for future research.

In many respects, these papers raise more questions than they answer about the 2014-2016 homicide rise—and they answer quite a few. We now know that, unlike the youth homicide rise of the 1980s and early 1990s, the recent homicide increase cut across different demographic groups and victim–offender relationships; that it was driven by the increased lethality of violent events; and that both the opioid epidemic and controversial police violence resulted in more civilian killings. Obviously, there is much still to be learned. We do not yet have an adequate understanding of the “homicide generating process,” as McDowall points out, or of the increased lethality of American violence or why other violent crimes did not rise as sharply as homicide did. It appears from Uniform Crime report data for 2017 and the first half of 2018 that homicide rates have plateaued and begun to drop (see https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr/publications#Crime-in%20the%20U.S). We do not know why that is, either. Much remains to be learned; this special issue of Homicide Studies offers useful guideposts for continued research on the homicide rise.