Retaliatory Homicide: Concentrated Disadvantage and Neighborhood Culture
Much of the research on violent crime is situated within an exclusively structural or subcultural frame-work. Some recent work, however, argues that these unidimensional approaches are inherently limited and thatmore attention needs to be given to the intersection of structural and cultural determinants of violence. Thepresent study takes up this challenge by examining both structural and cultural in uences on one underexam-ined type of homicide: retaliatory killings. Using quantitative data to examine the socioeconomic correlates andecological distribution of homicide in St. Louis, Missouri, and narrative accounts of homicide incidents, we ndthat a certain type of homicide (what we call “ cultural retaliatory homicide” ) is more common in some neigh-borhoods than in others due to the combined effects of economic disadvantage, neighborhood cultural responsesto disadvantage, and problematic policing. Problems confronting residents of these communities are oftenresolved informally— without calling the police—and neighborhood cultural codes support this type of...