One of the most dangerous beliefs in violent crime analysis is the idea that violence is random. It isn’t. What appears to the public as sudden, unpredictable, or senseless is almost always the final moment of a much longer behavioral trajectory. Long before the act,…

“Crime of passion.” The phrase is often used to explain away violence—as if intense emotion somehow makes it unpredictable, even unavoidable. But that framing is not just inaccurate. It’s dangerous. Because crimes of passion are not random explosions of feeling. They…