The MagazineAmerican MurderA theory why we’re prone to kill one another.Feb 1, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 19
• By CHRISTINE ROSEN
 American Homicide Why do Americans kill each other? It is not an idle question for a nation that has the highest homicide rate among the world’s affluent democracies. For decades, evolutionary biologists, psychologists, and sociologists have offered competing theories. Recently, criminologists who study deterrence have examined legitimacy—a broad term used to describe a community’s trust in local law enforcement and in the justice system’s fairness in sentencing, among other things—to explain fluctuations in homicide rates. Over the years historians have also offered explanations for the country’s violent tendencies, ranging from the upheavals caused by immigration and urbanization to the deep-rooted honor culture of the 19th-century South. In American Homicide, Randolph Roth, professor of history and sociology at Ohio State, offers an intriguing hypothesis to explain the country’s homicide rates: Murder isn’t personal; it’s political. Drawing on the work of criminologist Gary LaFree, who argues that, in the 20th century, the crime rate increased when people reported greater distrust in government and other social institutions, Roth looks back through American history and locates a similar force at work over the previous century-and-a-half. To read more, you must be a Weekly Standard Subscriber We're Sorry,
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