Historical Study

Homicide booms and busts are long-term phenomena that can best be studied with comparative historical methods. They cannot easily be explained by enduring socioeconomic inequalities because these persist during boom and bust periods alike. Historical changes that may help to lower homicide rates in the long run sometimes cause homicide booms in the short term. Modern policing methods have helped to end homicide booms without first resolving underlying social problems, but this may be possible only when the conditions are propitious. Keywords comparative, historical, methodology, structural causes, trends Homicide booms and busts have long-lasting consequences, but they have been recalci-trant to analysis with the theories and methods that predominate in criminology (Lafree, 2007). Criminologists rely heavily on sophisticated statistical methods to untangle rela-tionships between enduring social and psychological variables. This often works well with large cross-sectional data sets, but the variables that work well in cross-sectiona