Taking Stock of Homicide provides a critical look at homicide, offering a comprehensive review of the major areas of homicide research, including topics largely unexplored in the literature, such as qualitative and historical accounts.   Featuring leading scholars, this volume is organized around key themes and areas that reflect major contemporary trends and patterns in criminological literature. Chapters consider fundamentals such as data collection, sources, and histories; structural dynamics, including methodologies and fieldwork plus factors involving race and public health; the circumstances, types, and variations in homicide, from intimate partner violence to gangs, drugs, and firearms; as well as the prevention of and responses to homicide.   An essential state-of-the-discipline examination, Taking Stock of Homicide expands our knowledge while offering a toolkit for how to conduct future research on this serious, violent crime. Contributors: Mark Berg, Laura Boisten, Anthony Braga, Fiona Brookman, Shytierra Gaston, Veronica Valencia Gonzalez, Elizabeth Griffiths, Chris Guerra, John Hipp, John Jarvis, Helen Jones, Sharon Jones-Eversley, Jungmyung Kim, Kenneth Land, Marieke Liem, Michael Light, Xiaoshuang Iris Luo, Amy Magnus, Patricia McCall, Erin Orrick, Alex Piquero, William Pridemore, David Pyrooz, Arnaldo Rabolini, Kasey Ragan, Wendy Regoeczi, Johnny Rice II, Jacqueline Rhoden-Trader, Ethan Rogers, Meghan Rodgers, Randolph Roth, Jose Antonio Sanchez, Daniel Semenza, James Tuttle, Jolien van Breen, Kirk Williams, and the editors

Taking Stock of Homicide provides a critical look at homicide, offering a comprehensive review of the major areas of homicide research, including topics largely unexplored in the literature, such as qualitative and historical accounts.   Featuring leading scholars, this volume is organized around key themes and areas that reflect major contemporary trends and patterns in criminological literature. Chapters consider fundamentals such as data collection, sources, and histories; structural dynamics, including methodologies and fieldwork plus factors involving race and public health; the circumstances, types, and variations in homicide, from intimate partner violence to gangs, drugs, and firearms; as well as the prevention of and responses to homicide.   An essential state-of-the-discipline examination, Taking Stock of Homicide expands our knowledge while offering a toolkit for how to conduct future research on this serious, violent crime. Contributors: Mark Berg, Laura Boisten, Anthony Braga, Fiona Brookman, Shytierra Gaston, Veronica Valencia Gonzalez, Elizabeth Griffiths, Chris Guerra, John Hipp, John Jarvis, Helen Jones, Sharon Jones-Eversley, Jungmyung Kim, Kenneth Land, Marieke Liem, Michael Light, Xiaoshuang Iris Luo, Amy Magnus, Patricia McCall, Erin Orrick, Alex Piquero, William Pridemore, David Pyrooz, Arnaldo Rabolini, Kasey Ragan, Wendy Regoeczi, Johnny Rice II, Jacqueline Rhoden-Trader, Ethan Rogers, Meghan Rodgers, Randolph Roth, Jose Antonio Sanchez, Daniel Semenza, James Tuttle, Jolien van Breen, Kirk Williams, and the editors

2009 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Crime in most urban areas has been falling since 1991. While the decline has been well-documented, few scholars have analyzed which groups have most benefited from the crime decline and which are still on the frontlines of violence-and why that might be. In Unequal Crime Decline, Karen F. Parker presents a structural and theoretical analysis of the various factors that affect the crime decline, looking particularly at the past three decades and the shifts that have taken place, and offers original insight into which trends have declined and why. Taking into account such indicators as employment, labor market opportunities, skill levels, housing, changes in racial composition, family structure, and drug trafficking, Parker provides statistics that illustrate how these factors do or do not affect urban violence, and carefully considers these factors in relation to various crime trends, such as rates involving blacks, whites, but also trends among black males, white females, as well as others. Throughout the book she discusses popular structural theories of crime and their limitations, in the end concentrating on today's issues and important contemporary policy to be considered. Unequal Crime Decline is a comprehensive and theoretically sophisticated look at the relationship among race, urban inequality, and violence in the years leading up to and following America's landmark crime drop.

2009 "Choice" Outstanding Academic Title

Crime in most urban areas has been falling since 1991. While the decline has been well-documented, few scholars have analyzed which groups have most benefited from the crime decline and which are still on the frontlines of violence--and why that might be. In Unequal Crime Decline, Karen F. Parker presents a structural and theoretical analysis of the various factors that affect the crime decline, looking particularly at the past three decades and the shifts that have taken place, and offers original insight into which trends have declined and why.

Taking into account such indicators as employment, labor market opportunities, skill levels, housing, changes in racial composition, family structure, and drug trafficking, Parker provides statistics that illustrate how these factors do or do not affect urban violence, and carefully considers these factors in relation to various crime trends, such as rates involving blacks, whites, but also trends among black males, white females, as well as others. Throughout the book she discusses popular structural theories of crime and their limitations, in the end concentrating on today's issues and important contemporary policy to be considered. Unequal Crime Decline is a comprehensive and theoretically sophisticated look at the relationship among race, urban inequality, and violence in the years leading up to and following America's landmark crime drop.