The United States has a long history of violence, including the genocide of Native Americans and the Civil War. The homicide rate in the United States is almost three times higher than the next socially and economically comparable democracy, Finland. The authors describe how the homicide rate is calculated and discuss how the official rate of homicide may be deceptive because it may mask fairly large increases or decreases in the actual numbers of homicides. Despite the problems inherent in official crime rates, public policy is often led by these rates, particularly rates of violence and homicide. The articles in this issue all touch on some aspect of homicide rates and their implications for policy. While one article critically analyzes the decline in intimate partner homicides, another examines the impact of a multidisciplinary approach to homicides in Indianapolis. A third article analyzes descriptions of juvenile homicides in police reports and compares them with how Chicago newspapers reported accounts of juvenile homicides. Another article in this issue compares the grieving patterns of families of homicide victims to families of death row inmates, while a final article examines the impact of prisoner releases on local homicide rates. References