Homicide Victimization and Offense Rates by Age, Gender, Race, Relation of Victim to Offender, Weapon Used, and Circumstances, for the United States, 1976-79 and 1980-84

• NCJ Number: 114194
• Author(s): M A Straus; K R Williams
• Date Published: 1988
• Length: 16 pages
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Statistics
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This paper presents and illustrates the use of 385 homicide rates and 385 homicide counts for the United States for each of two time periods: 1976-79 and 1980-84.

Abstract

These data are from a new data resource -- the Comparative Homicide File (CHF). The complete CHF includes these 385 rates and 385 counts for each of the 50 States and the District of Columbia, for all cities with a population of 100,000 or more (168), and for their respective metropolitan areas (125). The CHF makes available for the first time homicide rates that distinguish between victims and offenders, the relationship between victims and offenders, and five other variables: age, gender, race, the circumstances under which the homicide occurred, and the type of weapon used. All possible two-way combinations of these variables are also provided. The CHF was computed from the Supplemental Homicide Report data tapes provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the years 1976-84. Graphs illustrate the way the 1,540 data points can be plotted to describe more adequately homicide patterns in the United States. 1 table, 2 figures, 11 references.