Research Bulletin

              Vol. 2, No. 3 October 2003
Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority
Research Bulletin
The higher risk of intimate
partner homicide when the
couple’s ages are widely
disparate is not easy to
explain.
population, the risk of one
partner killing the other is much
higher for age-discrepant Chicago
couples than for Chicago couples
who are closer to each other in
age. Many questions remain to be
answered, however, before this
finding may be used as a guide for
practice. Why are age-discrepant
couples at higher risk? Can this
association be explained by some other factor related
to age discrepancy?
There are many possible explanations for this phenom-enon.
Daly and Wilson (1988, and see Wilson, Daly, &
Wright, 1993) suggest that the apparent relationship
between age discrepancy and the risk of intimate
partner homicide might be explained by an increased
likelihood for intimate partner offenders in age-discrepant
relationships to be involved in other
criminal activities, not just intimate partner homicide.
The evidence presented in this Research Bulletin
indicates the association between the couple’s age
discrepancy and their risk of intimate partner homi-cide
cannot be explained by the likelihood that the
homicide offender has a previous arrest record.
Why is age discrepancy a risk factor
for intimate partner homicide?
— Examining the influence of offender criminal history
By Noelia Breitman and Todd K. Shackelford, Florida Atlantic University,
and Carolyn Rebecca Block, ICJIA Senior Research Analyst
Chicago Homicide Dataset Series
According to research
based on the Chicago
Homicide Dataset, the
risk of intimate partner homicide
is greater when the man is at least
16 years older than the woman or
the woman is at least 10 years
older than the man (Breitman,
Shackelford, & Block, 2003).
Relative to their numbers in the
Rod Blagojevich, Governor
Sheldon Sorosky, Chairman
Lori G. Levin, Executive Director
Research Bulletins are published periodically by the Illinois
Criminal Justice Information Authority. They focus on
research conducted by or for the Authority on a topic of
interest to Illinois criminal justice professionals and
policymakers. This is the second of a series of Research
Bulletins reporting on analysis of the Chicago Homicide
Dataset.
For more information about this or other publications from
the Authority, please contact the Authority’s Criminal
Justice Information Clearinghouse at 312-793-8550, or visit
our website at www.icjia.state.il.us
Printed by authority of the State of Illinois, October 2003.