NCJ Number
173760
Date Published
1995
Length
24 pages
Annotation
Statistics indicate that the rapid increase in Chicago in the late 1980s and early 1990s reflected an extremely sharp increase in the victimization risk of young black males and that this increase occurred only in street gang-related homicides.
Abstract
The escalation in homicides specifically affected young victims and occurred in homicides committed with high caliber or semi-automatic or fully automatic weapons. For victims between 15 and 24 years of age, the increase in the number killed with high caliber automatic weapons was extremely rapid. From only 14 in 1988, the number of deaths rose more than ninefold to 132 in 1993. During the same period, homicides with other high caliber weapons rose from 4 to 19 and homicides with low caliber automatic weapons rose from 17 to 45 for victims in the 15-24 age group. No other type of firearm homicide involving young victims increased, except for a 1-year spike in homicides with a .38 revolver. There were 133 homicides involving young victims committed with a .38 in 1990 but only 71 by 1993. This finding was consistent with a recent study of street gang-related violence in Chicago that found an increase in gang homicides but not in street gang assaults. This study concluded that the lethality of assaults had increased and that homicides involving young adults were increasingly drug-related. The most frequent type of homicide in Chicago between 1965 and 1990, 30 percent of the total, involved expressive confrontations between friends, acquaintances, neighbors, business partners, or other people who knew each other but were not related. 52 references, 16 notes, and 30 figures