ArticleInjury epidemiology2023
Misclassification of firearm-related violent crime in criminal legal system records: challenges and opportunities.
Article in Injury epidemiology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 3 citations in OpenAlex.
- Correction: Misclassification of firearm-related violent crime in criminal legal system records: challenges and opportunities.Injury epidemiology · 2025Article
- Measuring interpersonal firearm violence: natural language processing methods to address limitations in criminal charge data.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2024Article
- Cohort Study of Downgraded Misdemeanor Convictions and Subsequent Violent Crime: Differences by Defendant Race and Ethnicity.AJPM focus · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
7 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundCriminal legal system data are one source for measuring some types of firearm-related harms, including those that do not necessarily result in injury or death, but measurement can be hampered by imprecise criminal code statutes. We quantified the degree of misclassification in Washington state criminal codes for measuring firearm-related crime.
findingsIn this study of individuals aged 18 years and older who were convicted of a misdemeanor in Washington Superior Courts from 1/1/2015 through 12/31/2019, we compared firearm-related charges as measured with criminal codes and with manual review of probable cause documents, considered the gold standard. The sample included 5,390 criminal cases. Of these, 77 (1.4%) were firearm-related as measured with criminal codes and 437 (8.1%) were firearm-related as measured via manual record review. In the sample overall, the sensitivity of criminal codes was 17.6% (95% CI 14.2-21.5%), and negative predictive value (NPV) was 93.2% (95% CI 92.5-93.9%). Sensitivity and NPV were higher for cases with exclusively non-violent charges. For all cases and for cases with any violent crime charge, firearm-related crimes described in probable cause documents most often involved explicit verbal threats, firearm possession, and pointing a firearm at or touching a firearm to someone; almost 10% of all cases involved shooting/discharging a firearm. For cases with exclusively non-violent charges, the most common firearm-related crime was unlawful possession.
conclusionsCriminal records can be used for large-scale policy-relevant studies of firearm-related harms, but this study suggests Washington state criminal codes substantially undercount firearm-related crime, especially firearm-related violent crime.
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Registered trials
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