Harris awarded grant to study racial differences in homicides
Anthony R. Harris, professor emeritus of Sociology, has received a two-year grant from the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation to research race differences in homicidal outcomes from criminal injury.
Harris, who is now a visiting scientist with the department of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Maryland, College Park, has secured the funding for a project titled “From Intentional Injury Through Homicide: Exploring Race Differences in the Sequelae of Criminal Assault.” To accomplish the research goal, he has received permission to analyze restricted data on homicide from the Centers for Disease Control and the National Center for Health Statistics’ Division of Vital Statistics, emergency medical services procedures and mortality data from the newly initiated National EMS Information System and hospital mortality data from the American College of Surgeons’ National Trauma Database.
The first year of the project covers the calendar year 2009.
Harris received national and international media attention in 2002 with a study he co-authored that found improvements in emergency medical services dramatically suppressed murder rates in the U.S. from 1960-99. The study said this trend held even though weapons became more lethal and available during this time, and overall criminal assault rates rose steeply.
The findings were published in the May 2002 issue of Homicide Studies; an Interdisciplinary & International Journal. The study was co-authored by Sociology lecturer Gene A. Fisher, Stephen H. Thomas of the Harvard Medical School; and David J. Hirsh of the UMass Medical School.
Harris, who retired from the faculty in 2002, directed both the residential and online Criminal Justice programs in the Sociology Department.
February 17, 2009.
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