Among the more useful current trends in criminological research is that found within the analysis of lethal violence. In this study of homicide for the period of 1985 to 1994 in the cities of Chicago, Houston, and Miami, a number of prevailing themes in lethal violence research were explored. The three cities chosen share critical characteristics of interest and yet, are diverse enough to increase the generalizability of the findings to other urban areas in the United States. Through the use of data from the National Consortium on Violence Research Data Center, this study presents an analysis of the variation across census tracts in levels of overall and sex-specific homicide victimization and offending in the three major cities stated above. The study analyzed 14,443 homicides across 1,409 census tracks. Overall, the findings support the influence of specific factors reflecting social disorganization in the categorization of conceptually distinct neighborhood contexts in which homicide risk widely varies. In addition, a variation of relative homicide risk in specific neighborhoods across the three cities was found. The overall homicide risk in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods was lowest in Miami, even though more than 90 percent of Miami’s homicides occurred in these census tracts. Tables, appendix, notes and references