For this paper, explain why the United States has more homicides than other industrialized democracies. You want to make a concise yet comprehensive argument: what factors matter—and which do not matter—in explaining America’s relatively high murder rate?
To answer this question, you must reference (a) the course textbook; and (b) at least three additional peer-review articles or books—a total of four references (minimum). This means that you will have to do research to find relevant articles or books on the topic.
Remember that the paper should offer a comparative analysis. This means that if you argue, for example, that inequality and access to guns are the main factors distinguishing the US from other developed democracies with respect to homicide, you need to provide data on trends in inequality and gun ownership/use for the US in addition to at least 2-3 other societies. Avoid providing information on a particular phenomenon in the US if you don’t also provide information on the same phenomenon as it occurs in the other societies you analyze. Remember also that the paper is focused on “industrialized democracies.” So, you wouldn’t include countries like Somalia or Afghanistan, or even China (which is not a democracy). Instead, you could compare the US to most European societies, Canada, Australia, Japan, or a few others that fit the criteria.
Make sure you incorporate discussion of some key theories discussed in the text (chapters 1-2) and in class with regard to the issue of homicide in America and globally.
Format:
The paper should be a minimum of 4-5 pages (double-spaced, 12-point font, 1” margins). This does not include the title page and reference page. In the title page, indicate your year, major, and student number. The paper must be typed and submitted as a Word document. Plagiarism report.
APA format
NOTES
We often tend to see violence as consisting of discrete acts that are separate from
each other, as if each violent incident occurred in a vacuum. But that is not the case.
All violence is connected by a web of actions and behaviors, ideas, perceptions, and
justifications. While the individual and situational dynamics of violent behavior may vary
somewhat, they all share a number of essential characteristics that bind them together
into what we can call the unity of human aggression.
They saw their violence as being justified and provoked, not as unfounded aggression.
From this perspective, the American Indians, including the women and children, had
brought about their own destruction by their opposition to colonization.
Research tells us that individuals who are violent in one setting are more likely to be
violent in others and, in fact, the single best predictor for violent behavior is a history of
previous violence. Of course, this does not mean that an individual who engages in
violence is destined for a life of violence; it simply means that those who engage in
violence are more likely to do so in the future and across different contexts compared
to those without a violent history.
One possible cause for this ongoing problem in the military, according to various
experts, may relate to the continuing stress and impact of repeated deployment to
combat areas. The violence some soldiers experience in war zones, in other words,
may travel home with them and impact their relationships in their private lives.
This is sometimes referred to as spillover theory, which suggests that the values and
justifications for violence in socially approved settings “spill over” into other settings
and result in illegitimate forms of violence.
War—another example of legitimate violence—has also been found to increase rates of
illegitimate violence, not only by soldiers returning from the battlefield and engaging in
domestic violence but in the larger society as well.
starting point to the problem of explaining the causes of human violence can be made
with evolution and how it has impacted our propensity for violence. While much about
our origins is unknown or disputed, what we do know is that we have evolved to
inhabit a world in which violent behavior has often proved necessary for survival. Of
course, the lives of other animals that inhabit our planet are also characterized by a
great deal of violence.
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Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
