Summary
A fundamental theme of this current review is that homicide in Canada is a low base rate crime (Boyce and Cotter, 2013; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2011). Understandably, therefore, there are no theories and no research to date that has been able to identify the complete profile of risk factors that are highly predictive of homicide. Of course, even though gang involvement is a significant predictor of street or public focused homicide in certain urban/suburban contexts, such as in Chicago and Los Angeles (Egley and Ritz, 2006; Maxson, Gordon, & Klein, 1985), it is not predictive for most homicides more generally (Loeber and Ahonen, 2013; Weaver et al., 2004). In other words, unlike more prevalent or common crimes, such as property crimes, it is extremely difficult to identify the profile(s) of individuals with a high likelihood of committing homicide.
Part of the challenge of explaining, let alone predicting, individuals with high likelihoods of committing homicide is the complex interactions in any pathway among the four levels of risk profiles: (1) individual level (e.g., intelligence and verbal skills); (2) middle level (e.g., family and neighbourhood); (3) organizational (e.g., gangs); and (4) and national level (e.g., hand gun availability) (Corrado and Cohen, 2014). Nonetheless, there have been substantial advances in criminological theory and research concerning pathways that increase the likelihood for homicide.