Homicide Studies - Special Issue
Proposal: From homicide to imprisonment: Mapping the flow of homicide cases
The idea of this Special Issue is to bring together the state-of-the-art research of homicide flow data in various (developed and developing) countries. Although recordings of homicides typically start with a suspicious death, each of the steps that follow is associated with data loss. Suspicious deaths may be followed by an investigation, clearance, arrest, prosecution, conviction and, ultimately, imprisonment. There seem to be large international variations, however, in terms of data loss at each of these steps, as well as in terms of the time it takes for homicide cases to flow through the system. The aim of putting this Special Issue together is threefold: First, to provide insight into the international variation of homicide arrest rates, conviction rates, impunity rates, and severity of punishment. Second, we seek to provide explanations for such variations, advancing our theoretical understanding of the homicide flow. Third, we seek to develop methodological standards that would improve international comparability of homicide data.
This Special Issue builds on a thematic panel for the 4th International Conference on Governance, Crime and Justice Statistics by the UNODC in Lima, 4-6 June 2018. The participants of this panel - chaired by Manuel Eisner - reflected on the methodological challenges in coding and analysing the data, and presented some first analyses of homicide flows in various criminal justice systems. We believe this publication would be a valuable channel to present this pioneering work, and to move the field forward by bringing in new theoretical and methodological insights.
You can find out about the submission guidelines here.