When Men Murder Women: New Report Details Homicide Rates

Posted by Tana Ganeva, AlterNet at 6:13 PM on September 29, 2008.

The Violence Policy Center has just released a horrifying report detailing the rate of female homicides perpetrated by men in 2006 (the most recent year data was available). The study, based on Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR) data submitted to the FBI, analyzes incidences of murder involving one female victim and one male perpetrator. The data is broken down by state, race and ethnicity, murder weapon, relationship between the victim and offender, and the circumstances leading up to the murder.

The report's key findings:

• For homicides in which the victim to offender relationship could be identified, 92 percent of female victims (1,572 out of 1,701) were murdered by someone they knew.
• More than 12 times as many females were murdered by a male they knew (1,572 victims) than were killed by male strangers (129 victims).
• For victims who knew their offenders, 60 percent (949) of female homicide victims were wives or intimate acquaintances of their killers.
• There were 309 women shot and killed by either their husband or intimate acquaintance during the course of an argument.
• Nationwide, more female homicides were committed with firearms (54 percent) than with any other weapon. Knives and other cutting instruments accounted for 20 percent of all female murders, bodily force 12 percent, and murder by blunt object seven percent. Of the homicides committed with firearms, 73 percent were committed with handguns.
• In 88 percent of all incidents where the circumstances could be determined, homicides were not related to the commission of any other felony, such as rape or robbery.

An analysis of the rate of homicide by race found that black women were murdered at 3 times the rate of white women. The circumstances leading up to black female homicide largely mirrored that of all female homicides:

Compared to a black man, a black woman is far more likely to be killed by her spouse, an intimate acquaintance, or a family member than by a stranger. Where the relationship could be determined, 90 percent of black females killed by males in single victim/single offender incidents knew their killers (428 of 475).

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As with female homicide victims in general, firearms -- especially handguns -- were the most common weapons used by males to murder black females in 2006.

Other races and ethnicities were also disproportionately affected. "American Indian and Alaskan Native women (1.33 per 100,000) were more likely than white women to be murdered by a male offender ... " Meanwhile, " ... Asian and Pacific Islander women were the least likely (0.52 per 100,000) women of any race to be murdered by a male offender. Unfortunately, Hispanic ethnicity could not be determined on a national level because of the inadequacy of data collection and reporting."

The report also ranked female homicides by state:

Nevada ranked first as the state with the highest homicide rate among female victims killed by male offenders in single victim/single offender incidents. Its rate of 3.27 per 100,000 was more than two and one half times the national average. Nevada was followed by South Carolina (2.84 per 100,000) and Alabama (2.20 per 100,000).