Emma Fridel

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Assistant) at Florida State University

Although suicide and homicide are two of the leading causes of death, theoretical understanding and rigorous quantitative examination of homicide-suicide - the rare combination of suicide and homicide - are sparse. We ground homicide-suicide in the stream analogy of lethal violence and use three analytical techniques to examine the shared and uniqu...

Homicide followed by suicide remains an understudied phenomenon in the criminological literature. This is due, in part, to methodological and statistical limitations—much of the extant research includes small samples and has not kept pace with quantitative advances. Moreover, scholarship on homicide–suicide has been focused almost exclusively on in...

The mass murderer is known by a variety of names in both public and academic spheres, from the family annihilator to the active shooter, from the workplace avenger to the rampage school shooter. Although most researchers acknowledge that the phenomenon is heterogeneous, mass killing has defied classification, and currently no consensus typology exi...

In the research literature on homicide, gender has generally received less attention than other demographic characteristics, specifically the age and race of victims and offenders. To some extent, this is understandable because the overwhelming majority, almost three-quarters, of homicides in the United States involve a male killing another male. T...

Despite their exceptional rarity, high-profile mass murders, particularly those involving firearms, are often linked to deficiencies in our mental health system and gun laws. In this article, we consider the tenuous connections between severe mental illness, gun control measures, and mass shootings. Several suggested preventative strategies are eva...

Objectives. To examine the independent and joint effects of state legislation on minimum age for purchasing handguns and background checks on the suicide of young adults aged 18 to 20 years. Methods. We used negative binomial regressions with fixed effects for year and generalized estimating equations for state to estimate the effects of state legi...

Gun violence, often characterized as a singular issue, is not one cohesive problem. Instead, it takes many forms resulting from the complex interplay of multiple factors. Outcomes of gun violence also vary significantly. They may be (a) physically non-injurious (a gun is brandished), (b) injurious but non-lethal, or (c) lethal. To understand and ad...

Research highlights racial and ethnic disparities in suicide, but Asian American suicide receives very little attention in the literature. This is the first comprehensive, large-scale, nationally representative study of completed suicide among Asian Americans in the United States. Descriptive and multilevel regression techniques compared the risk f...

Research indicates that the burden of violent death in the United States is disproportionate across racial and ethnic groups. Yet documented disparities in rates of violent death do not capture the full extent of this inequity. Recent studies examining race-specific rates of potential years of life lost—a summary measure of premature mortality—indi...

Objectives Extend foundational work on the structural covariates of homicide (concentrated disadvantage in particular) by examining the differential effects of context across distinct types of incidents. Methods Using data on 31,513 incidents nested within 4,598 places from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) from 2003 to 2018, mul...

Suicide rates vary across occupational groups, with protective service occupations at elevated risk for suicide. Yet, research on correctional officer suicide remains sparse, as does research linking the broader social context to police officer suicides and correctional officer suicides. This study examines differences in the individual and context...

Objectives: Bridge the gap between feminist scholarship and sociological literature on gun utility by examining the correlates of gun usage in heterosexual intimate partner homicide by offender gender. Methods: Using data on 7,588 incidents from the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) from 2003 to 2018, logistic regression models examin...

Despite a wealth of research on intimate partner homicide, research on intimate partner homicide followed by suicide of the perpetrator is sparse. Existing studies on intimate partner homicide-suicide: tend to be descriptive, not keeping pace with quantitative advances in the epidemiological and social sciences; have yet to examine how context impa...

Due to the rarity of mass murder, scholars have focused almost exclusively on its individual-level risk factors, assuming that structural characteristics play a negligible role in the etiology of this infrequent but impactful crime. This study explores whether local structural factors influence the incidence rate of mass murder and its logical comp...

Mass public shootings in the United States have increased in number and severity in recent years, and there has been a corresponding rise in media reporting of such incidents. Does media coverage of these events lead to a short‐term increase in the probability of additional shootings? James Alan Fox, Nathan E. Sanders, Emma E. Fridel, Grant Duwe an...

With regard to the media reporting of crime statistics, the adage “no news is good news” is far more fitting in its reverse and converse forms: “Good news is no news” and “Bad news is big news.” When crime statistics paint a bleak picture, with crime levels rising, major headlines are made of it. The volatility of city homicide statistics is magnif...

Mass public shootings have generated significant levels of fear in recent years, with many observers criticizing the media for fostering a moral panic, if not an actual rise in the frequency of such attacks. Scholarly research suggests that the media can potentially impact the prevalence of mass shootings in two respects: 1) some individuals may be...

ABTRACT Following Kleck’s critique on my recent article on guns, firearms homicide, and mass shootings, I wrote a detailed and thorough reply refuting his methodological concerns and discussing directions for future research. In response, Kleck published a second rebuttal reiterating issues already addressed in both the original manuscript and the...

Police use of deadly force represents a pressing public policy issue with implications for police-community relationships and equitable access to justice. A growing body of literature considering the structural factors influencing officers’ exposure to potential violence suggests that context plays a pivotal role in officer use of deadly force. Thi...

Although mass murder is traditionally examined as a separate construct from homicide generally, few studies have explored their similarities and differences. This study compares the incident, victim, and offender characteristics of: (1) mass murderers and homicide offenders; and (2) mass murder-suicide offenders and homicide-suicide perpetrators. M...

Objectives Compared to homicide-only, homicide-suicide is understudied in the criminological literature. This study investigates the victim-offender relationship—one of the most well-established correlates of homicide-suicide—from a new angle. In addition to examining the familiarity/closeness of the victim-offender relationship, this study investi...

Objectives Use of lethal force by police officers has incited riots, inspired social movements, and engendered socio-political debate. Police officers also assume a high level of risk during police–citizen encounters. Yet, existing studies tend to center on these two phenomena independently. Additionally, the under-utilization of multilevel researc...

Literature has documented racial and ethnic disparities in resident fatalities by the police and police fatalities by residents. Yet, there has been a lack of research on police-resident relationships within Hispanic communities. Additionally, research has rarely considered the relevance of social context for fatal police-resident encounters or exa...

Objective: In this study, we analyzed the relationship between state firearm laws and the incidence and severity (i.e., number of victims) of mass public shootings in the United States during the period 1976-2018. Hypotheses: We hypothesized that states requiring permits to purchase firearms would have a lower incidence of mass public shootings...

Although mass shootings have fueled calls for large-scale changes in gun ownership and concealed carry legislation over the past thirty years, few studies have evaluated whether permissive gun policies actually deter mass shootings, and none have determined if their effects are the same on firearms homicide in general. This study examines the impac...

There is virtually no information on the relevance of contextual gun availability for homicide-suicide, or on whether ecological gun availability distinguishes homicide-suicide from homicide-only and suicide-only. This study addresses these gaps in the literature. Data from the National Violent Death Reporting System includes 2,535 homicide-suicide...

Research on school shootings remains limited, focusing primarily on individual-level risk factors, contagion, and prevention. The community effects literature on homicide and exposure to violence, however, suggests that contextual correlates also play an important role. This study examines whether macro-environmental characteristics impact the odds...

Research has shown that female offenders typically receive differential treatment in the criminal justice system in comparison to their male counterparts, even for extreme crimes like murder. This study compares the criminal sentences of 300 homicide offenders who killed at least two victims with a single co-offender (150 pairs) within their dyads...

In the research literature on homicide, gender has typically received far less attention than other demographic characteristics, specifically the age and race of victims and offenders. To some extent this is understandable given that the overwhelming majority, almost three-quarters, of homicides in the United States involve a male killing another m...

In Too Few Victims: Finding the Optimal Minimum Victim Threshold for Defining Serial Murder, we empirically examined how victim count influences the definition of serial homicide. With a series of multinomial logistic regressions, we determined that a cutoff of three victims was optimal to ensure a more homogeneous population, and recommended a ret...

In this chapter, the authors offer an overview of the nature, patterns, and trends in school shootings that have occurred over the past quarter century. Despite the relative safety of schools, certain high‐profile incidents have created a level of fear resulting in a variety of knee‐jerk responses that are of questionable value. The authors describ...

Zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) learn to produce songs in a manner reminiscent of spoken language development in humans. One candidate gene implicated in influencing learning is the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) subtype 2B glutamate receptor (NR2B). Consistent with this idea, NR2B levels are high in the song learning nucleus LMAN (lateral magnoce...

Objective: Despite substantial interest in the topic, there remains no consensus on the definition of serial killing, particularly in terms of the minimum victim count. Whereas most scholars had settled on either a three-victim or four-victim minimum, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) decided a decade ago to lower the threshold down to just...

The ability to imitate complex sounds is rare, and among birds has been found only in parrots, songbirds, and hummingbirds. Parrots exhibit the most advanced vocal mimicry among non-human animals. A few studies have noted differences in connectivity, brain position and shape in the vocal learning systems of parrots relative to songbirds and humming...