A link between homicide rate and holidays had been noted since late 1970s (Lester, 1979); national holidays in the US were found to coincide with an increase in daily homicide rate.  However, this empirical regularity has been (a) under-explored in other jurisdictions (b) under-theoretized. The theory of the broken promises offers one explanation by positing that marginalized individuals will demonstrate greater propensity towards lethal violence during holiday season than their peers who are more embedded in society (Stack, 1995).

I test this theoretical prediction empirically with the aid of the universe of decisions of Russian criminal courts in 2009-2012 on homicides (N=63,768). I capitalize on rich information regarding offender socio-economic status recorded by courts (Volkov, 2016) at sentencing. Contrary to the predictions of broken promises theory I find that well-integrated individuals (employed first-time offenders) are more likely to commit a homicide during Russian national holidays than the marginalized groups.

Key words: homicide rate, anomaly, holiday, theory of broken promises

Everyone interested is invited!

Working language is English.

Videoconference with Moscow office of the LCSR (Krivokolenny Pereulok, 3, room 3-333) will be provided. Guests from Moscow are invited to make a request for a pass to the building to Tereza Tonyan (ttonyan@hse.ru)  by 12 am of the seminar’s day.

Guests from St. Petersburg are invited to make a request for a pass to the building to Olesya Volchenko (ovolchenko@hse.ru) by 12 am of the seminar’s day.

Also after the seminar a videotape will be put up after the summary of the presentation.