Understanding Homicide and Aggravated Assault.pdfVIP

Understanding Homicide and Aggravated Assault Richard Rosenfeld University of Missouri-St. Louis For presentation at the conference on The Causes and Responses to Violence Arizona State University April 18, 2008 2 Homicide and aggravated assault are forms of violent crime. A “crime” is a violation of criminal law, but what is “violence”? That turns out to be a difficult question. Should the definition of violence be limited to acts causing physical harm? What about threats of harm? Can mere words or symbols constitute violence? Is defacing religious property or burning a cross on someone’s lawn a violent act? Social scientists do not agree on a single or unified definition of violence. Psychologists generally prefer broad definitions that include behaviors producing emotional harm. The Committee on Family Violence of the National Institute of Mental Health, for example, offers a definition that not only includes acts threatening or inflicting physical harm but those resulting in “restraint of normal activities or freedom, and denial of access to resources” (quoted in Crowell and Burgess, 1996, p. 10). By this definition, prisons and poverty could be considered forms of violence. Criminologists tend to favor narrower definitions of violence focusing on physical harm or threats. Many, but not all, criminologists accept the definition provided by an influential National Research Council study of violence as “behaviors by individuals that intentionally threaten, attempt, or inflict physical harm on others” (Reiss and Roth, 1993, p. 2). This definition includes a diverse assortment of behaviors, including homicide, assault, rape, torture, capital punishment, and boxing. But it excludes many acts that are encompassed by other, equally reasonable, definitions. How one chooses to define violence, as we shall see, prefigures the types of behavior that are counted as