Patterns and major determinants of homicide in the United States.

Criminal homicide has increased steadily during the past two decades to account today for more than 1 percent of deaths in the United States. After providing background information on the rates and patterns of homicide in the U.S., the author uses the literature to present a twofold discussion of factors affecting the incidence of homicide: those that act as a deterrence to crime, such as punishment, and environmental and biological factors that can interact in a complex way to produce violence and murder. Examples of these latter factors include firearms, drug and alcohol abuse, genetics, race, psychiatric disorders, metabolic states, the economy, geographic region, the media, and political instability.