Urban Homicide

Abstract

In recent reviews of the literature on violent criminal offending and victimization, a call has been issued for analytic models that integrate individual-level data with data from the social and geographical contexts in which people live—that is, contextual analyses. Combining data from the Homicides in Chicago (1965-1994) data file with information from U.S. Bureau of the Census's (1992) 1990 Census of Population and Housing, and using hierarchical linear modeling techniques, the current research examines theoretical arguments deriving from the economic deprivation and social ecological theoretical frameworks. Among other findings, the results lend support to Sampson and Wilson's (1995) hypothesis that a key determinant of the relationship between race and violent crime is the differential distribution of blacks in communities characterized by structural disorganization.