About

Randolph Roth is a distinguished professor of History and Sociology at Ohio State University and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His scholarly work primarily focuses on the history of the United States from colonial times to the present, emphasizing social and cultural history, the history of crime and violence, environmental history, the history of religion, and the history of democracies. Roth has contributed significantly to understanding patterns of homicide and violence through his interregional and comparative studies, notably in his award-winning book 'American Homicide,' which explores the causes and patterns of homicide in the United States from colonial times onward. His research challenges proximate explanations such as poverty or race, instead highlighting factors like community identity, respect, and feelings toward government as determinants of violence. Roth has served on influential committees, including the National Academy of Sciences Roundtable of Crime Trends and the Editorial Board of the American Historical Review. He is the principal investigator of the 'National Homicide Data Improvement Project' and co-founder of the Historical Violence Database, which compiles data on violent crime and death from medieval times to the present. His work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the inaugural Distinguished Scholar award from the American Society of Criminology's Historical Criminology division and multiple teaching awards from Ohio State. Currently, he is completing a study on child murders in America and continues to advance research on the history of violence, crime, and social behavior.

Research topics

• Criminology
• Political science
• History
• Sociology
• Law

Selected publications

• Review of “Crime Wave: The American Homicide Epidemic”

  Social Forces · 2025-09-13

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Defining, Recording, and Measuring Crime in the United States from Colonial Times to the Present

  2024-11-26

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Historians study crime in many different places over long stretches of time to see if repetitive patterns appear—patterns that are so deep and striking that they are causal and can point toward better public policies. Historians cannot carry out such research, however, unless they can measure crime across time and space—a daunting task, given the limitations of the surviving sources, changes in the ways in which crimes have been defined and prosecuted, and the varying degrees to which particular crimes concerned citizens and authorities. That is why historians of crime must pay close attention to the ways in which crimes have been defined, reported, and measured in different historical contexts.

  PublisherDOI

• Child Deaths from Lack of Care and Injuries of Undetermined Intent in Ohio, 1959 to 2015: How Many Were Probable Homicides?

  Homicide Studies · 2024-09-10

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Previous scholars have shown that a considerable proportion of child deaths in mortality statistics that have been coded as deaths from Lack of Care (LC) or from Injuries of Undetermined Intent (IUI) were probable homicides. Historical research, however, shows (a) that nosologists used the LC and IUI classifications with a changing frequency over time in Ohio and in the national at large in relation to the number of child deaths that they classified as homicides, and (b) that the proportion of LC and IUI deaths in Ohio that were probable homicides changed over time. These changes should be taken into account by historical criminologists whenever they study long-term trends in child homicides, particularly the homicides of children under age 10.

  PublisherDOI

• Historical Violence Database

  CrimRxiv · 2023-06-08

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Opioid Epidemic and Homicide

  CrimRxiv · 2023-06-09 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  In The Opioid Epidemic and Homicide, criminologists Joel Wallman, Richard Rosenfeld, and Randolph Roth find a “substantial association” between opioid overdose deaths and homicide, with variations by race and geography.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Prison in the Woods: Environment and Incarceration in New York's North Country

  Journal of American History · 2022-06-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Clarence Jefferson Hall looks at the development of America's carceral system from perspectives that few scholars have used. He examines the “natural” and built environments in New York's North Country in and around Adirondack State Park, where the state located a disproportionate number of its new prisons in the late twentieth century. He also focuses on the rural communities that welcomed or opposed these prisons. Many of America's new prisons landed in once-prosperous villages hit hard by deindustrialization and the closure of mines or logging operations. Hall is aware of the hardships these locations posed for inmates and their families, most of whom lived over three hundred miles to the south in New York City's crime-burdened neighborhoods and found it impossible to visit relatives regularly. But his focus is on the relationships among New York's prison officials, the Adirondack Park Agency (charged with preserving the natural heritage and resources of the park), politicians, environmentalists, affluent part-time residents who owned vacation homes in the park, and permanent residents—many aging, unemployed or underemployed, and unhappy about shuttered businesses, abandoned homes, and the decrepit state of roads, sewers, and water systems.

  PublisherDOI

• Chapter 8. Does Better Angels of Our Nature Hold Up as History?

  Berghahn Books · 2022-09-27

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Opioid Epidemic and Homicide in the United States

  Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency · 2021-01-13 · 17 citations

  articleSenior author

  Objectives: Evaluate the relationship between the opioid epidemic and homicide rates in the United States. Methods: A county-level cross-sectional analysis covering the period 1999 to 2015. The race-specific homicide rate and the race-specific opioid-related overdose death rate are regressed on demographic, social, and economic covariates. Results: The race-specific opioid-related overdose death rate is positively associated with race-specific homicide rates, net of controls. The results are generally robust across alternative samples and model specifications. Conclusions: We interpret the results as reflecting the violent dynamics of street drug markets, although more research is needed to draw definitive conclusions about the mechanisms linking opioid demand and homicide.

  PublisherDOI

• T. C<scp>ole</scp> J<scp>ones</scp>. <i>Captives of Liberty: Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance in the American Revolution</i>.

  The American Historical Review · 2021-09-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Historians have long been aware of the hardships that prisoners faced during the American Revolution and of the appalling loss of life among captives. Disease, malnutrition, and murder claimed thousands. The transport of Ethan Allen and his men in chains to England after their defeat in Canada, the hacking deaths of dozens of rebels captured in South Carolina by Loyalist leader “Bloody” Bill Cunningham, and the misery of Patriot soldiers held below deck in British prison ships are well known, as are the wrongs suffered by prisoners in Patriot hands. Surrendering Loyalists were often denied quarter or hanged, and British soldiers and German mercenaries who surrendered after defeats found their captivities as prolonged, miserable, and deadly as those faced by their American counterparts. However, as T. Cole Jones argues persuasively in Captives of Liberty: Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance in the American Revolution, the treatment of...

  PublisherDOI

• Homicide and the Opioid Epidemic: A Longitudinal Analysis

  Homicide Studies · 2021-11-05 · 10 citations

  article

  Recent cross-sectional research has disclosed a positive relationship between opioid-related death rates and homicide rates. The current study adds a longitudinal dimension to this research. We estimate fixed effects panel models of the temporal relationship between race-specific homicide rates and opioid-related death rates within U.S. counties and county clusters between 1999 and 2015. The results reveal a positive association between change over time in homicide and opioid-related deaths, net of multiple socioeconomic and demographic controls, in both the Non-Hispanic White and Black population. The association is stronger in the Appalachian counties, where the opioid epidemic has been particularly severe.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Quality Data Is the First Step: The National Homicide Data Improvement Project

  NSF · $165k · 2012–2015

Frequent coauthors

• Robert Eugene Puff

  Helmholtz Zentrum München

  6 shared

• Claudia Peplow

  6 shared

• Peter Achenbach

  6 shared

• AG Ziegler

  6 shared

• Joerg Hasford

  German Medical Association

  4 shared

• Marietta Rottenkolber

  Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

  4 shared

• Douglas Lee Eckberg

  3 shared

• Joel Wallman

  3 shared

Education

• Ph.D., History

  Yale University

  1981

• B.A., History

  Stanford University

  1973

Awards & honors

• Clio Award for Distinguished Teaching in History from the Ph…
• Distinguished Teaching Award from the Ohio Academy of Histor…
• Ohio State University Alumni Award for Distinguished Teachin…
• Outstanding Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Scie…
• Rodica C. Botoman Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teac…