Book Review: Pearson-Nelson, N. (2008). Understanding Homicide Trends: The Social Context of a Homicide Epidemic. New York: LFB Scholarly. v, 191 pp

• DOI: 10.1177/0734016808325712
• Author: Robert M. Worley
• Date: 01 June 2009
• Published date: 01 June 2009
• Subject Matter: Articles

262 Criminal Justice Review
Pearson-Nelson, N. (2008). Understanding Homicide Trends: The Social Context of a
Homicide Epidemic. New York: LFB Scholarly. v, 191 pp.
DOI: 10.1177/0734016808325712
In this book, Benjamin Pearson-Nelson examines the sudden increase in homicide rates
that occurred between the late 1980s and early 1990s. The author describes this period as
an epidemic, a term that he borrows from the public health literature. To conduct the
research for this book, Pearson-Nelson utilized multiple sources, including census data,
Uniformed Crime Reports, National Drug Intelligence Center reports as well as additional
reports from various governmental agencies. He employs the sources to ascertain the
reasons why some cities experienced a sharp rise in homicides during this period, whereas
other cities did not. Variables such as population size and density, resource deprivation, and
per capita number of police are examined in this book. The author also examines whether
a city’s proximity to cocaine distribution hubs had any relation to the homicide rate during
this phenomenon.
One of the strengths of this book is that Pearson-Nelson tests multiple hypotheses in his
examination of the homicide epidemic. Also, rather than merely seeing whether certain
variables were present during these epidemics, he also examines each variable’s relation-
ship to both the magnitude and duration of homicide during this period. Clearly, the author
uses an epidemiological approach in every sense of the word. It is equally impressive that
Pearson-Nelson employs spline regression techniques during his analysis. He contends that
this statistical technique was particularly useful in revealing the cities that experienced the
highest homicide rates during this period under investigation. Because the author uses the
city as his unit of analysis, he argues that spline regression was an appropriate tool to
employ during the analysis phase of the project.
In his study,...