Unresolved homicide: a cross-national perspective

Abstract

Administrative justice research seeks to understand both the intended and unintended consequences of social action, institutional outcomes, and resulting sociological meanings. The study of homicide informs social science of one set of phenomena, while investigating unresolved victimization provides a contrasting framework of analysis. Unsolved or cold case homicides represent both terrible acts of harm and indicators of some deficiency in the ability of law enforcement to adequately respond. This dissertation expands on the current understanding of unresolved homicide by conducting a cross-national comparison of outcomes. Beginning with a framework for understanding homicide, an analysis of unresolved homicide as a unique outcome is examined from a hierarchical theoretical perspective. This research proposes that there are linkages across social strata of macro governance, meso law enforcement institutions, and micro direct-contact predatory violations that display distinct patterns at an international level. This dissertation investigates the macro and meso Weberian (1947) bureaucratic structures that engages a micro Routine Activities Theory (Cohen and Felson 1979) process of post-homicide administrative justice outcomes. The research is informed by a combination of recommendations from prior literature, as well as introducing new techniques for measuring complex data. Utilizing information from the United Nations, World Bank, the Varieties of Democracy dataset from the Department of Political Sciences at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and relevant secondary sources, a multiple step process analyzes thirteen hypotheses. This includes verification of the constructed dataset, the replication of prior studies, and the implementation of speculative exploratory abductive research (i.e., inferential observational testing). Moving from the bivariate correlations of homicide to measures of formal contact by the police, to judicial convictions for homicide, 100 nations are compared across two sets of predictive independent variables through a process of multiple linear regression analyses. The first set of predictive independent variables tests are for macro level societal indicators, while the second set examines aspects of meso to micro interactions that affect opportunities for offending and victimization. The findings support the validity of the dataset, achieve replication of prior cross-national homicide research, and from this a speculative unresolved homicide proxy measure is constructed. Deriving from the difference between the number of reported homicides and the reported number of formal contact police events in a country for a given year, a speculative examination of outcomes is conducted. Further exploration of the unique patterns identified by the unresolved homicide proxy measures are tested to provide further opportunities for theoretical explication. Most of the hypotheses support past findings for homicide rates in producing patterns of correlations and significant predictive relationships. Mixed results from subsequent analyses contribute to a broader understanding of cross-national homicide and unresolved homicide events in context to macro and meso level social indicators. Measures of social inequality, economic development, civil unrest, impartial enforcement of the law, fairness of public administration, and equity of available public services contribute to the understanding of cross–national patterns affecting unresolved homicide rates.