ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses primarily on homicide and secondarily on robbery as the principal indicators of violence. Violence has been a major theme in public discussion for decades, and apprehension about it was intensified by the sharp rise in violence in the mid-1980s, a development most pronounced among inner-city minority youth. The period from 1980 to 1998 has seen some sharp swings in the rate of violence in the United States. The changes in levels of robbery have many similarities to those associated with homicide, but with some important differences. Some important racial differences in the growth of handgun homicides can also be observed, with the dominant growth being among young African-Americans, as offenders and as victims. One crime-control factor whose effects are especially hard to sort out is incarceration. Following a fifty-year period of impressive stability, incarceration rates in the United States began an enormous increase in the mid-1970s, quadrupling by the end of the century.
