Determinants of Chicago Neighborhood Homicide Trends: 1965-1995.

This paper examines homicide trends in Chicago neighborhoods from 1965-1995. Developmental and life-course criminologists have a relatively long history of examining the trajectories of criminal offending among individuals, identifying such categories as life-course persistent or chronic offenders, adolescent-limited offenders, and adolescent-peaked offenders. This approach has much promise for identifying community 'careers' in crime, and macro-level researchers have increasingly experimented with a variety of methods to identify such trajectories. The current paper uses semi-parametric group-based modeling to identify unique homicide trajectories in Chicago neighborhoods over the course of 30 years. Going beyond prior research, and drawing primarily on social disorganization theory, potential macro-structural determinants of those trajectories are then examined. Predictors include neighborhood characteristics such as concentration of poverty, unemployment, single-headed households, divorce, racial context, density, and population instability. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]