NCJ Number
120748
Date Published
1987
Length
91 pages
Annotation
This document provides an overview of the crime of homicide and its victims, information on persons arrested for murder, and the systems response by type of disposition and sentence given.
Abstract
The three major sections of the report are willful homicide crimes, arrests for murder, and dispositions of adults arrested for murder. This publication uses charts to depict essential facts about homicide in California and shows that willful homicides increased in number and rate per one hundred thousand population from 1985-1986. Over half of the victims were the friend or acquaintance of the offender, female victims were found to be four times more likely than male victims to be a family member of the offender, and more victims were killed at their place of residence than at other locations. More victims were killed by firearms than by all other types of weapons combined. In 1986, the rate of black homicide victims was more than eight times that of whites. The report also shows that the number of arrests for murder decreased from 1985 to 1986 by 4.7 percent. Of the 1,745 persons arrested for murder for which dispositions were received in 1986, over one-third were convicted of murder, and in 1986, twenty-one persons were sentenced to death. 72 tables, 43 charts.