Although these statistics sound alarming, they reflect a positive trend in domestic homicides. Since 1976, when the FBI first began keeping statistics on intimate murders, the number of men and women killed by an intimate partner has dropped significantly. The number of men killed by an intimate declined by 67.6% between 1976 and 2000, and the number of women killed was stable until 1993 when it began to decline. The peak for intimate murders occurred in 1976, when 2,957 men and women were killed.
Although the number of white females killed by an intimate increased during the 1980s, it declined after
TABLE 2.9
| Homicides by relationship and weapon type, 1990–2002 | ||||||
| Relationship of Blunt Other victim to offender | Total | Gun | Knife | Blunt object | Force | Other weapon |
| SOURCE: James Alan Fox and Marianne W. Zawitz, "Homicides by Relationship and Weapon Type, 1990–2002," in Homicide Trends in the United States, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey, September 28, 2004, http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/intimates.htm (accessed December 9, 2004) | ||||||
| Husband | 100% | 70% | 26% | 2% | 1% | 2% |
| Ex-husband | 100 | 87 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Wife | 100 | 68 | 14 | 5 | 9 | 4 |
| Ex-wife | 100 | 78 | 12 | 2 | 6 | 2 |
| Boyfriend | 100 | 46 | 45 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Girlfriend | 100 | 57 | 19 | 5 | 14 | 5 |
1987. In 1997, it reached its lowest point in two decades. Nevertheless, in 2000 the percentage of all female homicide victims killed by an intimate was roughly comparable with rates reported twenty-five years earlier.
According to the same research, the number of intimate homicides for all other race and gender groups declined over the same period, with a drop of 77.3% for black males killed by an intimate and a 53.4% decrease for black females. The number of white males killed by an intimate declined 53.5% during the same span of time.
Women of every age are substantially more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than men. (See Table 2.8.) Every year, about one-third of all females murdered in the United States are killed by an intimate (33.5% in 2000). In comparison, only 3.7% of all male murder victims were killed by an intimate in 2000.
Women are also more likely to be killed by their spouses, although this rate has declined substantially in the years since the survey was first conducted. The intimate homicide rate declined for blacks of both genders in every relationship category but was actually higher for white girlfriends in 2000 than it had been in 1976. (See Figure 2.4.)
Of all intimate homicides committed during this period, guns were used in a majority of the murders, although such other weapons as knives were also used. In the period between 1990 and 2000, more than two-thirds of all victims of murder at the hands of spouses and former spouses were killed by guns. However, almost half of the boyfriends murdered by their partners (45%) and one in five of the girlfriends murdered by their partners (19%) were killed with knives. Intimate homicides were more likely to involve knives than murders by nonintimates. (See Figure 2.5 and Table 2.9.)
One researcher has investigated what factors present in abusive relationships might indicate a threat of the violence escalating to homicide. Carolyn Rebecca Block found that certain types of past violence directed against
FIGURE 2.4
female intimates indicate an increased risk of homicide, especially choking ("How Can Practitioners Help an Abused Woman Lower Her Risk of Death?" National Institute of Justice Journal, no. 250, November 2003). She also found that recently abused women were more likely to be killed—half of women who were killed by their partners had experienced violence in the previous thirty days. She also found that increasingly frequent violent incidents posed a higher risk of homicide.
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