We've noted before that most murder victims in the United States are often demographically-related to their murderers, but did you know that they would also appear to be even more closely linked on their social networks?
A new study of gun violence in Chicago, led by Yale sociologist Andrew Papachristos, reveals that a person's social network is a key predictor in whether an individual will become a victim of gun homicide, even more so than race, age, gender, poverty, or gang affiliation.
"Risk factors like race and poverty are not the predictors they have been assumed to be," said Papachristos, "It's who you hang out with that gets you into trouble. It's tragic, but not random."
The study, co-authored with Christopher Wildeman from the Yale Department of Sociology, likens gun violence to a blood-borne pathogen. In the analysis, published Nov. 14 in The American Journal of Public Health, Papachristos notes that crime, like a disease, follows certain patterns. People in the same social network, he said, are more likely to engage in similar risky behaviors—like carrying a firearm or taking part in criminal activities—which increases the probability of victimization.
The abstract of Papachristos and Wildeman's paper puts some numbers behind what they found:
Combining 5 years of homicide and police records, we analyzed a network of 3718 high-risk individuals that was created by instances of co-offending. We used logistic regression to model the odds of being a gunshot homicide victim by individual characteristics, network position, and indirect exposure to homicide. Results. Forty-one percent of all gun homicides occurred within a network component containing less than 4% of the neighborhood’s population. Network-level indicators reduced the association between individual risk factors and homicide victimization and improved the overall prediction of individual victimization. Network exposure to homicide was strongly associated with victimization: the closer one is to a homicide victim, the greater the risk of victimization. Regression models show that exposure diminished with social distance: each social tie removed from a homicide victim decreased one’s odds of being a homicide victim by 57%.
The bottom line: the more space there is between you and a criminal, the better.
Other Food for Thought
In some U.S. cities with high murder rates, such as Milwaukee, Baltimore, Chicago (the current U.S. homicide capital), New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and even smaller towns like Flint, Michigan, a very large percentage of the victims of firearm-related homicides have criminal records, which means these homicides really involve criminals killing criminals.
Meanwhile, about 1 out of 8 homicide offenders serving time in U.S. prisons have been diagnosed with mental illnesses.
One might reasonably wonder then if what we have is not so much an inadequately-controlled firearm problem as it is an inadequately-controlled criminal and mentally-ill population problem. And maybe the real question you need to answer with respect to your own personal safety is who do you know who falls in both categories?
References
Andrew V. Papachristos and Christopher Wildeman. (2013). Network Exposure and Homicide Victimization in an African American Community. American Journal of Public Health. e-View Ahead of Print. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2013.301441. [Abstract].
Image Credit: Cyber Crime Review.
Labels: crime
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