I'm Aaron Jacklin, and this is Explaining Crime, an independent newsletter that helps you explain crime to your audience.
Your First Five is a daily series (M-F) that publishes a curated selection of recent research related to crime and justice. Each post is more a tip sheet than an article and contains links to new studies (each related to a single topic) that I hope will enhance your work explaining crime. The publication schedule is in flux for the moment.
These new studies related to criminology and criminal justice were published recently by journals I monitor.
1. “Invisible Deaths”: A Critical Analysis of the Study of Prison Homicide, published in Homicide Studies.
When fatal violence occurs, victims of these homicides are constructed as deserving of violence. Drawing from critical criminological perspectives of state-sanctioned violence, I argue that treatment of these victims affects the legitimacy of the criminal justice system and public safety.
2. Examining Homicides, Victims, Socioeconomic Context, and Weather Conditions in Mexico Through Spatio-Temporal Dimensions, published in Crime & Delinquency.
Mexico has steadily increased homicide rates over the past few decades. To better understand this phenomenon, we examine homicides, victims, socioeconomic context, and weather conditions by focusing on two critical dimensions of crimes: space and time.
3. Exploring Sexual Homicide by Overarching Groups of Victims, published in Crime & Delinquency.
A latent class analysis based on statistically significant differences in a census of 107 cases in Israel during 71 years (1948–2019) involving four identified groups of victims suggested a typology of two overarching groups of victims: nonmarginalized victims composed of children and women and socially marginalized or stigmatized victims composed of sex workers and gay men.
4. Understanding homicide–suicide, next steps in research, published in Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health.
[Note: Not only was this article restricted access, but the abstract isn't even available.]
5. A systematic review of literature on homicide followed by suicide and mental state of perpetrators, published in Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health.
There was no clear association between any specific mental illness and homicide–suicide type, although depression was most cited. Social role disjunction, motive, substance misuse and relevant risk or threat behaviours were themes identified across all groups.
I might cover some of these studies further in Understanding Crime. If one sounds interesting or important, let me know in the comments.
If you’ve seen a few of these posts and are wondering: Yes, I use a template. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, these posts are intended more as tip sheets than articles. “These posts” and the directories (the next of which is coming soon!) are the output of my research discovery system, which I’ve been working on and streamlining. That system is intended to furnish a wide variety of crime research and facilitate choices of what new research to actually report on, both for myself and for the journalists out there. I hope others will find these tip sheets interesting and useful for reasons that I haven’t even thought of.
I'd love to know if and how you've used Your First Five.