Monkkonen, Eric H(enry) 1942–2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born August 17, 1942, in Kansas City, MO; died of prostate cancer May 30, 2005, in Culver City, CA. Historian, educator, and author. An urban historian at the University of California at Los Angeles, Monkkonen was a leading authority on the history of homicide in America. Educated at the University of Minnesota, he earned a B.A. in 1964, followed by an M.A. in 1968 and a Ph.D. in 1973. It was not until his graduate school years that Monkkonen narrowed his specialty down to the history of murder, along with its causes. After teaching urban history at the University of North Carolina from 1973 to 1975, he joined the UCLA history faculty. Monkkonen focused on crime in large cities, though he sometimes compared his research to rural crime rates. Among his publications are The Dangerous Class: Crime and Poverty in Columbus, OH, 1865–1885 (1975), Police in Urban America, 1860–1920 (1981), and Murder in New York City (2001), the last of which was an ambitious project that analyzed data dating back to 1780. From his intense study of police reports, newspaper stories, and coroner data, Monkkonen drew a number of counterintuitive conclusions. Among these was his assertion that crime in cities was often no worse, and sometimes less prevalent, than in less urban areas; that poverty does not necessarily predict higher crime rates; and that the problem of homicide has not increased over the centuries, but rather has remained fairly steady since the days of colonial America. After completing his New York City book, Monkkonen was researching data in Los Angeles for his next book, but he passed away before he could complete the project.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2005, p. B10.

ONLINE

UCLA Today Online, http://www.today.ucla.edu/ (June 28, 2005).