Volker Grundies

An Exploratory Analysis of German and U.S. Youthful Homicide Offending

German and U.S. incident-level homicide files are extracted from the Freiburg Cohort Study and Houston, Texas, respectively, to compare characteristics of criminal homicide perpetrated by persons ages 14 to 30 years between the mid-1980s and 2001. Findings indicate that many of the characteristics of offenders, victims, their relationships to one another, and methods of killing are not culture specific, particularly for female offenders. However, despite a substantial difference between the two areas in overall homicide levels, the offending rates for this 14- to 30-year-old group are 5 to 6 times the overall national rates in each country. Findings further indicate that peak ages for homicide offending by males are 2 to 5 years older for German nationals and immigrants than for specific racial and/or ethnic subgroups of U.S. offenders. Support is found in both countries for the concept of an aging out of crime in the case of homicide.