Schleimer Julia P, Mustafa Ayah, Ross Rachel, Bowen Andrew, Gallagher Amy, Bowen Deirdre, Rowhani-Rahbar Ali
Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Washington, 3980 15th Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA.
Firearm Injury and Policy Research Program, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Inj Epidemiol. 2023 Oct 2;10(1):46. doi: 10.1186/s40621-023-00458-1.
Criminal legal system data are one source for measuring some types of firearm-related harms, including those that do not necessarily result in injury or death, but measurement can be hampered by imprecise criminal code statutes. We quantified the degree of misclassification in Washington state criminal codes for measuring firearm-related crime.
In this study of individuals aged 18 years and older who were convicted of a misdemeanor in Washington Superior Courts from 1/1/2015 through 12/31/2019, we compared firearm-related charges as measured with criminal codes and with manual review of probable cause documents, considered the gold standard. The sample included 5,390 criminal cases. Of these, 77 (1.4%) were firearm-related as measured with criminal codes and 437 (8.1%) were firearm-related as measured via manual record review. In the sample overall, the sensitivity of criminal codes was 17.6% (95% CI 14.2-21.5%), and negative predictive value (NPV) was 93.2% (95% CI 92.5-93.9%). Sensitivity and NPV were higher for cases with exclusively non-violent charges. For all cases and for cases with any violent crime charge, firearm-related crimes described in probable cause documents most often involved explicit verbal threats, firearm possession, and pointing a firearm at or touching a firearm to someone; almost 10% of all cases involved shooting/discharging a firearm. For cases with exclusively non-violent charges, the most common firearm-related crime was unlawful possession.
Criminal records can be used for large-scale policy-relevant studies of firearm-related harms, but this study suggests Washington state criminal codes substantially undercount firearm-related crime, especially firearm-related violent crime.
刑事法律系统数据是衡量某些类型枪支相关危害的一个来源，包括那些不一定导致受伤或死亡的危害，但测量可能会受到不精确的刑法法规的阻碍。我们对华盛顿州刑法中衡量枪支相关犯罪的错误分类程度进行了量化。
在这项对2015年1月1日至2019年12月31日期间在华盛顿高等法院被判轻罪的18岁及以上个人的研究中，我们将刑法衡量的与枪支相关的指控与对可能原因文件的人工审查进行了比较，人工审查被视为金标准。样本包括5390起刑事案件。其中，根据刑法衡量，77起（1.4%）与枪支相关，通过人工记录审查衡量，437起（8.1%）与枪支相关。在整个样本中，刑法的敏感性为17.6%（95%置信区间14.2 - 21.5%），阴性预测值（NPV）为93.2%（95%置信区间92.5 - 93.9%）。对于仅有无暴力指控的案件，敏感性和NPV更高。对于所有案件以及有任何暴力犯罪指控的案件，可能原因文件中描述的与枪支相关的犯罪最常涉及明确的口头威胁、持有枪支以及用枪指着某人或触摸某人的枪支；几乎10%的所有案件涉及开枪/发射枪支。对于仅有无暴力指控的案件，最常见的与枪支相关的犯罪是非法持有。
犯罪记录可用于与枪支相关危害的大规模政策相关研究，但这项研究表明华盛顿州刑法对枪支相关犯罪的统计严重不足，尤其是枪支相关的暴力犯罪。
