Violent Crime - Victims Of A Black Widow?

Rate for Husbands and Ex-Husbands Killed by Their Wives or Ex-Wives, 1976-1999

Trends in the rate at which men are killed by their intimate partners follow the same patterns seen for women. In short, the trend is down, and dramatically so for black men.

The graph charts homicide rates for men by race and marital status. The dark shaded area is the overall male homicide rate. Rates for white boyfriends are so close to the rates for white husbands that they were left off the graph to avoid a cluttered presentation.

For all men, rates are down. Black husbands and ex-husbands have experienced the most dramatic decline in victimization. Their rate of murder by a mate fell from a high in 1976 of 18.42 per 100,000 men age 20 to 44, to a low in 1999 of 1.33. This decline approaches an astonishing decrease of 1,300%. The question that strikes one looking at these data is: What was happening in the late 1970s and early 1980s with black married couples? A black husband or ex-husband was, in 1976, almost half as likely to be killed by his wife/ex-wife as by anyone else. Happily, black women no longer kill their husbands at such a high rate. In fact, black husbands and ex-husbands now have one of the lower rates of intimate homicide of all gender/race groupings.

Between 1976 and 1999, on average, 5.6% of all men who were murdered annually died at the hands of an intimate partner. For women, that number was 30%.

In this panel we see again that blacks have higher rates of victimization than whites, this time as males. The graphic below summarizes the pattern for both races and both genders. The bars represent victims. Thus, in 1999, 3.97 black boyfriends (of 100,000 black males aged 20 to 44) died at the hands of their girlfriends. The victimization rate of this group decreased 226% in the 1976 to 1999 period.

Intimate Homicide Rate by Victim's Relationship, 1999

Blacks dominate the left-hand side of the graph where the rates are highest. Of the top four, three are black categories and three are female categories. Of the four lowest ranked categories, three are white and three are male.

We mustn't forget children as we conclude this discussion of domestic violence. Children are often caught in the middle of the violence carried on by the adults in a household and are sometime the direct victims of violent outbursts. Please see Chapter 5 for a discussion of child abuse.

We will look next at violent crime rates by race.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics , Homicide Trends in the United States, "Intimate Homicides," January 4, 2001, available online at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/intimates.htm. Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, Intimate Partner Violence and Age of Victim, 1993-1999, October 2001, p. 1. U.S. Centers for Disease Control, National Center for Health Statistics, Vital Statistics, "Homicide rate per 100,000 population, 1900-2000," October 2002, available online at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/hmrt.htm.