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We use the National Crime Victimization Survey to examine whether a suspect's relationship to an assault victim affects whether the police make an arrest. The results indicate that in cases of minor assaults the police are less likely to make an arrest when the suspect is an intimate partner of the victim than when the suspect is an identifiable stranger. However, the police are not as lenient when the suspect is an intimate partner as they are when the suspect is someone else the victim knows. Intimate partner suspects avoid arrest in part because they are less likely to commit their crimes in front of witnesses. In addition, victims who know the suspect in any way are reluctant to sign complaints, and this reluctance inhibits arrest. Men are less likely than women to sign complaints, particularly when the suspect is a partner.

We used data from a survey of inmates who have committed homicide or assault to examine whether men and women who have killed or assaulted their intimate partners are different from other violent offenders. A "gender perspective" implies that intimate partner violence and violence between the sexes have different etiologies than other types of violence, whereas a "violence perspective" implies that they have similar etiologies. Our evidence supports a violence perspective. In general, offenders who attack their partners are similar to other offenders in terms of their prior records, alcohol and drug use, and experiences of abuse. We observed some differences between men who attack women (including their female partners) and other male offenders, but the differences were opposite those predicted by a gender perspective. For example, men who attacked their partners were particularly likely to have been abused by their partners. In addition, men who attacked women were particularly likely to have experienced sexual abuse during childhood and to have been intoxicated at the time of the incident. These results suggest that some well‐known predictors of violence are particularly strong predictors of male violence against women and female partners.

This article examines an experiment embedded within a nationally representative survey of adult Americans to investigate gender norms regarding retaliatory violence between spouses and acquaintances. Contrary to claims that societal norms permit violence within marriage, respondents disapproved of retaliatory violence against spouses more than they did against acquaintances. Contrary to claims that gender roles encourage violence by males more than females, respondents were just as likely to approve of female retaliation against males as they were male retaliation against males, and they were more approving of females' retaliating against females than of males' retaliating against females. Male and female respondents had similar, strongly disapproving attitudes toward men's retaliating against women, even though male respondents were more accepting of retaliation in all other conditions. Evidence clearly shows that societal norms discourage retaliation between spouses and men's retaliating against women. Consequently, violent wife abuse continues despite (not because of) societal norms.

We examine the effect of alcohol consumption on an individual's risk of victimization for physical and sexual assault. Analyses of the National Violence Against Women Survey suggest that the frequency and amount of alcohol people consume has strong effects on their risk of victimization when drinking, but is not associated with their victimization while sober. This evidence suggests that drinking has a situational causal effect on victimization, and cannot be attributed to opportunity factors associated with drinking. This effect is particularly strong for men and young adults, who may be more likely to behave provocatively when under the influence. Victims of sexual assaults and men assaulted by their female partners are also particularly likely to be drinking.

The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health is used to examine the relationship between pubertal development and delinquency among boys (grades 7–9). We find strong positive relationships between pubertal development and violence, on one hand, and property crimes, drug use, and precocious sexual behavior on the other. However, we find no evidence that these effects are due to the effects of puberty on risk‐taking, maladjustment, dominance behavior, or autonomous behavior. We do find evidence that pubertal development interacts with social factors—mature boys are more strongly influenced by delinquent friends. Pubertal development also has stronger effects on the delinquency of boys who are academically successful and thus are generally disinclined to engage in delinquency.

Research indicates that incidents in which women kill their husbands are more likely to involve victim precipitation than incidents in which men kill their wives. Formulating a causal interpretation of this finding, however, is complicated because the observed pattern may reflect gender differences in violence rather than any special dynamics between husbands and wives. In this research, we introduce and illustrate a framework for disentangling the effects of intimacy and gender on violence. We examine the additive and multiplicative effects of the gender of the offender, the gender of the victim, and the relationship between the offender and victim on victim precipitation. For the most part, the pattern of victim precipitation in homicide reflects the fact that males tend to be more violent than females. However, we find some evidence of special dynamics for intimate partner homicides: Men who are killed by their partners tend to have more violent records than men who are killed in other circumstances.

In this study, we examine the relationships among social‐demographic characteristics, attitudes, and violence, drawing on cultural theories. Structural equation modeling techniques are employed to examine data from a representative sample of the general population and a sample of ex‐offenders. The findings indicate that age, gender, and SES are related to attitudes toward retribution and courage and to disputatiousness. Further, attitudes toward courage and retribution have significant effects on disputatiousness and violence, which explains a substantial portion of SES effects. The results suggest that lower‐class persons are more likely to engage in violence to a large extent because they are more punitive and place greater emphasis on showing courage in conflicts.

This research explores the utility of the notion of lethal intent for understanding the outcomes of injurious attacks. We suggest that assailants sometimes kill rather than merely injure victims to avoid either retaliation or criminal prosecution. We hypothesize that, for these tactical reasons, offenders will be more likely to kill when they have no accomplices, when their victims are male or black, and when the victim can identify them. These hypotheses are tested with a merged data set containing information on homicides and nonlethal victimizations involving robbery, rape, and pure assault. The results of multiple logistic regression analyses are largely consistent with theoretical expectations.

AbstractSelf‐report data are used to compare the relative incidence of aggression and violence among ex‐mental patients, ex‐offenders, and the general population and to examine the effect of socio‐demographic variables on the frequency of these behaviors. Frequency was measured by reported frequencies of aggressive behaviors during the preceding year, by whether respondents could recall serious disputes, and by the recency of the disputes they recalled. In support of studies that have relied on official arrest statistics, the evidence suggests that ex‐offenders engage in violence with greater frequency than the other two groups and that they have a greater tendency to physically attack and injure their antagonists when involved in violent disputes. Ex‐mental patients appear to use weapons more frequently than the general population, but they are no more likely to injure antagonists. In contrast to labeling theory, police were no more likely to become involved or to make an arrest in incidents involving ex‐patients or ex‐offenders.