Domestic Homicide Demographics

Criminologists are not the only professionals within the criminal justice field who can benefit from, and utilize, analytical methods and statistics (Cadigan, 2016). Law enforcement administrators, like police chiefs or correctional wardens, may also find value in statistical analysis. For this assignment, I have chosen to focus on Fernandez-Lanier’s report (2015) concerning domestic homicide in New York in the 2014 calendar year; this report breaks down the number of instances of domestic homicides (wherein the victim and perpetrator had an intimate or familial relationship) and examines the victimology of these events, as well as other statistics.
The report contains a number of frequency tables as well as three pie charts (Fernandez-Lanier,

Chart 1 demonstrates that domestic homicides are actually only a relatively small percentage of the total homicides that occurred in New York during the target year, as only about 20% of the 2014 homicides were domestic in nature (Fernandez-Lanier, 2015). Of the domestic homicides, there was a relatively equal split between intimate relation homicides and familial homicides (Fernandez-Lanier, 2015). Additionally, Chart 1 shows that only about 10.6% of New York’s 2014 homicides were actually the result of intimate partner violence, making this type of violence seem like a relatively minor contributor to the homicide rate (Fernandez-Lanier, 2015). Chart 1 is not inaccurate or even necessarily misleading, but by itself it presents a picture of the justice system that lacks nuance and depth, because it does not demonstrate the disproportionate number of women who are negatively impacted by intimate partner violence (Fernandez-Lanier,

It would also be helpful to gather more data about the domestic intimate partner homicides to learn if there were prior reported domestic violence incidents between the perpetrator and victim. If so, there may be more opportunity to educate and train officers who respond to domestic violence situations so that future incidents can be curtailed. For instance, if officers can be better informed about the patterns that pervade domestic violence relationships, like the fact that many women will leave their violent partners multiple times before finally escaping a violent relationship, they will be better prepared to assist the victims and prevent future danger (LeTrent,