Study Finds Family Members Most Common Perpetrators of Infant and Child Homicides in U.S.

In the United States, homicide is a leading cause of death among young people aged 19 and under. A large proportion of these crimes involve firearms. Although the homicide rate among this population declined in the 1990s and 2000s, it has increased every year since 2013, with a sharp increase during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, a new study by Hannah Rochford, Ph.D., assistant professor at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, and two colleagues at the University of Iowa, provides insight into the characteristics of those who committed these crimes and their use of firearms from 1976 to 2020.

“The more information we have nationally about these perpetrators, the better we can develop comprehensive, evidence-based public health policies and prevention strategies,” Rochford said.

“Unfortunately, the data lag behind what is known for most other public health issues. For example, the National Violent Death Reporting System did not exist at all until 2003, did not include most states until 2015, and still does not fully represent violent deaths in all states. This makes it difficult to learn from past trends, such as the rise in youth violence in the late 1980s and early 1990s.”

For their study, published in Epidemiology of injuriesThe researchers sought to fill these gaps by describing trends between 1976 and 2020 in perpetrator characteristics (gender, age, and relationship to victim) and firearm presence by age, gender, and race of homicide victims in the United States, from birth to age 19.

To do this, the researchers applied the multiple imputation version of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supplemental Homicide Reports (SHR) from 1976 to 2020.

“The non-imputed SHR is limited by ‘unit shortages’ because not all law enforcement agencies provide data for reporting each year, and by ‘element shortages’ because some homicide cases lacked case information,” Rochford said. “For example, more than a quarter of homicide cases lacked information on the age, gender and race of the perpetrator.”

After stratifying descriptive analyses by age, sex, race, and five-year time period, the team found that family members were the most common perpetrators of infant and toddler homicides (ages 0–4) and children (ages 5–12), and that acquaintances were responsible for the majority of adolescent homicides (ages 13–19). One-quarter of adolescent homicides involving female victims were perpetrated by an intimate partner.

The team found a sustained increase in the proportion of homicides committed with a firearm. From 2016 to 2020, the proportion of homicides involving firearms reached a record high during the study period for three categories: infants and toddlers (14.8%), children (53.1%), and adolescents (88.5%). Firearm homicides were particularly distressing for Black pediatric victims, with Black infants and toddlers being affected twice as often as white infants and toddlers, for example.

“These differences appear to correspond to developmental changes in family dependency and interaction, peer and romantic relationships, and age-related role independence,” Rochford said. “For example, adult female family members were responsible for more than a quarter of all infant and young child homicides, but less than 1 percent of adolescent homicides.”

Rochford said these findings indicate that policy interventions that improve family stability and well-being may be more effective in preventing infant, toddler and child homicides, and programs that target peer and community relationships, as well as policies that focus on access to firearms, may be more critical in preventing adolescent homicides.