The Social Demography of Three Contemporary Homicide Booms in the United States

The current study draws upon crime trends and social change scholarship to situate the United States homicide boom from 2014 to 2020 in a sociohistorical context, and assess the social demography of the recent homicide boom in comparison to those of the past. Using a Supplementary Homicide Reports, we describe three contemporary U.S. homicide booms: (1) 1976 to 1980, (2) 1984 to 1991, and (3) 2014 to 2020. We examine relative percent change ratios for each of several demographic and geographic groups. We also use logistic regression models to estimate the change in the probability that a firearm was used in a homicide incident. Our findings indicate that a much broader segment of the population was swept into the most recent homicide increase than in the 1984 to 1991 boom. Additionally, while firearm and non-firearm homicides contributed in similar measure to the 1970s boom, firearm killings were responsible for nearly all the increase during the most recent homicide boom. The groups and places with the highest rates of homicide during booms are not always those suffering the largest relative increases. Certain groups, however, are consistently vulnerable to booms. Firearm killings are increasingly dispersed throughout the population during homicide booms.