The role of neighborhood environment and risk of intimate partner femicide in a large urban area.

OBJECTIVES

We evaluated the contribution of neighborhood-level factors indicative of social disorganization, including educational and occupational attainment, immigrant concentration, physical disorder, and social cohesion, to the likelihood of intimate partner femicide (IPF) while taking into account known neighborhood- and individual-level IPF risk factors.

METHODS

We used medical examiner data on 1861 femicide victims between 1990 and 1999 and archival information on 59 neighborhoods in New York City to conduct a multilevel case-control analysis.

RESULTS

After controlling for neighborhood-level income, we found that no neighborhood factors were significantly associated with IPF risk, as compared with risk of non-IPF and risk of femicide from unknown perpetrators, above and beyond the contributions of individual-level factors. The strongest predictors of IPF were foreign country of birth and young age.

CONCLUSIONS

IPF victims were nearly twice as likely as non-IPF victims to be foreign born; by contrast, there was little neighborhood-level heterogeneity with respect to IPF risk. Further research is needed to identify neighborhood characteristics that uniquely influence risk of IPF to guide community-level interventions.