Intentional Injury: Are There No Solutions?

See, e.g., United States Department of Health and Human Services, Health United States 1980, DHHS Publication No. (PHS)81–1232, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Report of the National Conference on Injury Control, 1981: The Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore, MD, May 18–19, 1981; Injury in America: A Continuing Public Health Problem, Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1985.

Conference on Injury in America, Atlanta, GA. February 17–19, 1987.

United States Department of Health and Human Services, Report of the Secretary's Task Force on Black and Minority Health 5, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986, 41.

Prothro-Stith D. , “Violence Prevention,” Public Health Reports 102, November–-December 1987 (Special Section: 1987 Conference on Injury in America), 616.

Davis R. , “Black Suicide in the Seventies: Current Trends”, Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior 9, Fall, 1979, 131–40; Davis R. , “Suicide among Young Blacks: Trends and Perspectives,” Phylon 41, September, 1980, 223–29.

Black and Minority Health, supra note 3, 9.

Mann C.R. , “The Black Female Criminal Homicide Offender in the United States”, in Black and Minority Health, supra note 3, 145–81; Mann, “Black Female Homicide in the United States,” presented at conference on Black Homicide and Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, March 23–24, 1987; Mann, “Getting Even? Women Who Kill in Domestic Encounters,” Justice Quarterly 5, March, 1988, 201–19; and Mann, forthcoming paper, 1988.

Farley R. , “Homicide Trends in the United States, Demography 17, May, 177–88; O'Carroll and Mercy, 1986 in Homicide Among Black Americans ( Hawkins D. , Ed.), pp. 29–42. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Shin Y. Jedlicka D. and Lee E.S. , “Homicide among Blacks,” Phylon 38, 1977, 398–407; Farley, supra note 8; U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Report of the Surgeon General's Workshop on Violence and Public Health, DHHS Publication No. HRS-D-MC 86–1, 1985; Black and Minority Health, supra note 3; Centers for Disease Control, Homicide Surveillance Summary, 1978–79 (1983), Homicide Surveillance: High Risk Racial and Ethnic Groups–-Blacks and Hispanics, 1970–1983 (1986), Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control.

See, e.g., Dunn C.S. , The Patterns and Distribution of Assault Incidence Characteristics Among Social Areas, Analytic Report 14, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, National Criminal Justice Information and Statistics Service, Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office.

Brearley H.C. , Homicide in the United States, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1932.

Wolfgang M.E. and Ferracuti F. , The Subculture of Violence: Towards an Integrated Theory in Criminology, London: Tavistock, 1967; Curtis L.A. , Violence, Race and Culture, Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1975; Silberman C. , Criminal Violence–-Criminal Justice: Criminals, Police, Courts, and Prisons in America, New York: Random House, 1978.

For a summary of these ideas, see Hawkins D. , “Reasons for the Differential between Black and White Homicide Rates in the United States,” paper prepared for “Black Homicide: A Public Health Crisis,” a conference held at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, Baltimore, MD, March 23–24, 1987.

Hawkins D. , Homicide Among Black Americans, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986.

Report of the National Conference on Injury Control, supra note 1; U.S. Dept of Justice, Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence: Final Report, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984.

Sherman L.W. and Berk R.A. “Deterrent Effects of Arrest for Family Assault,” American Sociological Review 49, April, 1984, 261–72.

These facts may also illustrate social class bias in the way that social problems are defined and responded to in American society. Teen suicide is a phenomenon that affects large numbers of white, middle class youth in comparison to homicide which is concentrated among the black and white lower classes. In addition, initial domestic violence intervention efforts have been spearheaded by various groups of largely middle class white women. Few interest groups exist to appeal to decisionmakers regarding the funding of homicide prevention.

Hawkins D.F. , “Causal Attribution and Punishment for Crime,” Deviant Behavior 2, April–June, 1981, 207–30.

See, e.g., Shin , supra note 9, 406.

See, e.g., Black and Minority Health, supra note 3.

The belief of law enforcement personnel that homicide is not preventable by police action may also stem from their perceptions of the socioeconomic status of typical criminal offenders. That is, economic deprivation, lower class values, or similar factors may be perceived as the causes of homicide.

Lundsgaarde H.P. , Murder in Space City: A cultural analysis of Houston homicide patterns, New York: Oxford University Press, 1977; Farley, supra note 8, 183.

Wolfgang and Ferracuti , supra note 12.

Farley, supra note 8, 183.

Shin , supra note 9; Farley, supra note 8.

U.S. Dept of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, Healthy People: The Surgeon General's Report on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. DHEW Publication No. (PHS) 79–55071, Washington DC; U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979; U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, Promoting Health/Preventing Disease, Objectives for the Nation, Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1980.

Gelles R. , The Violent Home: A Study of Physical Aggression between Husbands and Wives, Beverly Hills: Sage, 1984; Task Force on Family Violence, supra note 15.

Hawkins D.F. , supra note 14; Also, Hawkins, “Black and White Homicide Differentials: Alternatives to an Inadequate Theory,” Criminal Justice and Behavior 10, December 1983, 407–40; and Hawkins, “Black Homicide: The Adequacy of Existing Research for Devising Prevention Strategies,” Crime and Delinquency 31, January 1985, 83–103.

Dunn, supra note 10, 10.

Barocas H.A. , “Urban Policemen: Crisis Mediators or Crisis Creators?” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 43, July 1973, 632–39.

Sherman and Berk , supra note 16.

Brearley , supra note 11, 112.

Swigert V.L. and Farrell R.A. , “Normal Homicides and the Law,” American Sociological Review 42, 16–32, February 1977, 19 (emphasis was in the original).

Farley , supra note 8.

Wolfgang and Ferracuti , supra note 12.

Curtis , supra note 12.

For a review of this research tradition, see Messner S.F. and Tardiff K. , “Economic Inequality and Levels of homicide: An analysis of urban neighborhoods,” Criminology 24, May 1986, 297–317, 299.

See, e.g., Blau J.R. and Blau P.M. , “Metropolitan Structure and Violent Crime,” American Sociological Review 44, February, 1982, 114–29; Messner S.F. , “Poverty, Inequality, and the Urban Homicide Rate,” Criminology 20, May 1982, 103–14; Bailey W. C. , “Poverty, Inequality, and City Homicide Rates: Some Not So Unexpected Findings,” Criminology 22, November, 1984, 531–50; and Messner and Tardiff, supra note 37.

Staples R. , “The Masculine Way of Violence,” in Hawkins D. (ed.), Homicide Among Black Americans, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986.

Harvey W.B. , “Homicide among Young Black Adults: Life in the Subculture of Exasperation, in Hawkins D. (ed.), Homicide Among Black Americans, supra note 39.

Allen N.H. , Homicide: Perspectives on Prevention, New York: Human Services Press, 1980; Hawkins , supra note 28; and Wolfgang and Ferracuti , supra note 12.

Hawkins , 1985, supra note 28.

Daly M. and Wilson M. , Homicide, New York: Aldine DeGruyter, 1988.

See Clarke R.V. , “Situational Crime Prevention: Its Theoretical Basis and Practical Scope,” in Crime and Justice: An Annual Review of Research 4, Tonry M. and Morris N. (eds.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983, 225–56.