Violent Crime

Violent Crime

Expressive violence - acts that vent rage, anger, or frustration. Instrumental violence - acts designed to improve the financial or social position of the criminal.
Causes
1. Personal Traits - A significant number of people involved in violent episodes may be suffering from severe mental abnormalities. Lewis finds that death row inmates have a history of mental impairment and intellectual dysfunction. Abnormal personality structures, including such traits as depression, impulsivity, aggression, dishonesty, pathological lying, lack of remorse, borderline personality syndrome, and psychopathology, have been associated with various forms of violence.
2. Ineffective families - Absent or deviant parents, inconsistent discipline, physical abuse, and lack of supervision have all been linked to persistent violent offending. Those exposed to even minimal amounts of physical punishment may be more likely one day to use violence themselves; if the abuse is prolonged, so are the effects.
3. Human instinct - Sigmund Freud believed that human aggression and violence are produced by instinctual drives. humans possess two opposing instinctual drives that interact to control behavior: eros , the life instinct, which drives people toward self-fulfillment and enjoyment; and thanatos , the death instinct, which impels toward self-destruction. Thanatos can be expressed externally (as violence and sadism) or internally (as suicide, alcoholism, or other self-destructive habits).
4. Exposure to violence - Kids who are constantly exposed to violence at home, at school, or in the environment may adopt violent methods themselves. Exposure to violence can also occur at the neighborhood level when people are forced to live in violent, dangerous neighbourhoods.
5. Substance abuse - 1) A psychopharmacological relationship may be the direct consequence of ingesting mood-altering substances. 2) Drug ingestion may also cause economic compulsive behavior , in which drug users resort to violence to support their habit. 3) A systemic link between drugs and violence occurs when drug dealers turn violent in their competition with rival gangs.
6. Firearm availability - The Uniform Crime Report (UCR) indicates that two-thirds of all murders and about two-fifths of all robberies involve firearms. The presence of firearms in the home also significantly increases the risk of suicide among adolescents, regardless of how carefully the guns are secured or stored.
7. Cultural values - Marvin Wolfgang and Franco Ferracuti 'subculture of violence'. In this subculture, a potent theme of violence influences lifestyles, the socialization process, and interpersonal relationships. Because police and other agencies of formal social control are viewed as weak and devalued, understaffed, and/or corrupt, people are willing to take matters into their own hands and commit what they call "cultural retaliatory homicide".
8. National values - a number of national characteristics are predictive of violence: a high level of social disorganization, economic stress, high child abuse rates, approval of violence by the government, political corruption, and an inefficient justice system.
Types
1. Rape - "the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will. It involves nonconsensual sexual intercourse. Criminologists now consider rape a violent, coercive act of aggression, not a forceful expression of sexuality.
  1. Metropolitan areas today have rape rates significantly higher than rural areas; nonetheless, urban areas have experienced a much greater drop in rape reports than rural areas.
  2. Rape is a warm-weather crime—most incidents occur during July and August, with the lowest rates occurring during December, January, and February.
  3. Sadistic rape - involves both sexuality and aggression. The sadistic rapist is bound up in ritual—he may torment his victim, bind her, or torture her.
  4. Date rape - A rape that involves people in some sort of courting relationship. Reporting is most common in the most serious cases, such as when a weapon is used; it is less common when drugs or alcohol is involved
  5. Marital rape - Many spousal rapes are accompanied by brutal, sadistic beatings and have little to do with normal sexual interests. Traditionally, a legally married husband could not be charged with raping his wife; this immunity was referred to as the marital exemption .
  6. Statutory rape - sexual relations between an under-age minor female and an adult male. Although the sex is not forced or coerced.
  7. Causes of rape - 1) Biological - rape may be instinctual, developed over the ages as a means of perpetuating the species. 2) Male Socialization - Some men have been socialized to be aggressive with women and believe that the use of violence or force is legitimate if their sexual advances are rebuffed. 3) Psychological Abnormality - Rapists may suffer from some type of personality disorder or mental illness. 4) Social Learning - sexual aggression may be learned through interaction with peers who articulate attitudes supportive of sexual violence. 6) Sexual Motivation - an association between the ages of rapists and those of their victims, indicating that men choose rape targets of approximately the same age as their consensual sex partners. Older rapists tend to harm their victims more than younger rapists.
  8. Shield laws - protect women from being questioned about their sexual history unless it directly bears on the case,
2. Anger rape - when sexuality becomes a means of expressing and discharging pent-up anger and rage. His aim is to hurt his victim as much as possible.Often the anger rapist acts on the spur of the moment after an upsetting incident has caused him conflict, irritation, or aggravation.
3. Power rape - an attacker who does not want to harm his victim as much as he wants to possess her sexually. Rape is instead a way of putting personal insecurities to rest, asserting heterosexuality, and preserving a sense of manhood.
4. Murder - The unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. The only crime that can be punished by the death sentence.
  1. First degree murder - when a person kills another after premeditation and deliberation. Premeditation means that the killing was considered beforehand and suggests that it was motivated by more than a simple desire to engage in an act of violence. Deliberation means the killing was planned after careful thought rather than carried out on impulse:
  2. Second-degree murder - The killer to has malice aforethought but not premeditation or deliberation.
  3. Manslaughter - Homicide without malice, punishable by upto 15 years prison.
  4. Voluntary or non negligent manslaughter - Killing committed in the heat of passion or during a sudden quarrel that provoked violence. Although intent may be present, malice is not.
  5. Involuntary or negligent manslaughter - A killing that occurs when a person's acts are negligent and without regard for the harm they may cause others (e.g. car accidents).
  6. FACT: Murder victims and offenders tend to be males; about 80 percent of homicide victims and nearly 90 percent of offenders are male. Murder, like rape, tends to be an intraracial crime; about 90 percent of victims are slain by members of their own race. About half of all murder victims are African Americans.
  7. Stranger murders have increased over the last decade.
  8. School murders - most shooting incidents occur around the start of the school day, the lunch period, or the end of the school day. In most of the shootings (55 percent), a note, threat, or other action indicating risk for violence occurred before the event. Shooters were also likely to have expressed some form of suicidal behavior and to have been bullied by their peers.
  9. Serial killers - a person who kills three or more persons in three or more separate events. In between the murders, a serial killer reverts to his or her normal lifestyle.
    1. 1) "Thrill killers" strive for either sexual sadism or dominance. 2) "Mission killers" want to reform the world or have a vision that drives them to kill. 3) "Expedience killers" are out for profit or want to protect themselves from a perceived threat.
    2. Males were much more likely than females to use extreme violence and torture. Whereas males used a "hands-on" approach, including beating, bludgeoning, and strangling their victims, females were more likely to poison or smother their victims. Men tracked or stalked their victims, but women were more likely to lure victims to their death.
  10. Mass Murderers - involves the killing of four or more victims by one or a few assailants within a single event.
    1. Revenge killers - want to get even with individuals or society at large. Love killers - are motivated by a warped sense of devotion. They are often despondent people who commit suicide and take others, such as a wife and children, with them. Profit killers - are usually trying to cover up a crime, eliminate witnesses, and carry out a criminal conspiracy. Terrorist killers - are trying to send a message.
  11. Spree Killers - engage in a rampage of violence over a period of days or weeks.
5. Assault and Battery - Battery requires offensive touching, such as slapping, hitting, or punching a victim. Assault requires no actual touching but involves either attempted battery or intentionally frightening the victim by word or deed. These are felonies when a weapon is used or when part of another felony.
  1. The weapons most commonly used in assaults are blunt instruments and hands and feet.
  2. Domestic Violence -
    1. Child abuse - any physical or emotional trauma inflicted on a child for which no reasonable explanation can be found. Another form of abuse results from neglect —not providing a child with the care and shelter to which he or she is entitled.
      1. Abusive parents may themselves have been abused, Blended families, which include children living with an unrelated adult such as a stepparent or with another unrelated coresident, have higher incidence of abuse, Parents may become abusive if they are isolated from friends, neighbors, or relatives who can help in times of crisis, parents may be suffering from depression and other forms of psychological distress.
    2. Child sexual abuse - children who have been abused experience a long list of symptoms, including fear, post-traumatic stress disorder, behavior problems, sexualized behavior, and poor self-esteem. As they mature, abused girls are more likely than other girls to drop out of high school, become teen parents, be obese, and experience psychiatric problems, substance dependence, and domestic violence.
    3. Parental abuse - Child-to-parent violence is associated with some form of earlier violence by parents: husband-to-wife, wife-to-husband, or child abuse.
    4. Spousal abuse - physical abuse is commonly accompanied by mental abuse and coercion that can have long-term damaging psychological effects. spousal abuse sometimes tragically leads to the death of the intimate partner. Factors that predict a lethal conclusion to domestic violence include the perpetrator's access to a gun and previous threat with a weapon; having a stepchild living in the home; estrangement, especially from a controlling partner; and subsequent involvement with another partner
6. Robbery - the taking or attempting to take anything of value from the care, custody, or control of a person or persons by force or threat of force or violence and/or by putting the victim in fear.
  1. The severity of punishment is based on the mount of force used during the crime, not on the value of the items taken.
  2. Armed robbery - Robbers select targets that are vulnerable, accessible, and profitable. Robberies seem to peak during the winter months. People whose clothing, jewelry, and demeanor mark them as carrying substantial amounts of cash make suitable targets; people who look like they can fight back are avoided. Female armed robbers are likely to choose female targets, reasoning that they will be more vulnerable and offer less resistance.
  3. Acquaintance robbery - Victims may be reluctant to report these crimes because they do not want to get involved with the police. Some robberies are motivated by street justice. Because the robber knows the victim personally, the robber has inside information that there will be a "good take."
7. Hate crimes - violent acts directed toward a particular person or members of a group merely because the targets share a discernible racial, ethnic, religious, or gender characteristic.
  1. Causes: 1) Thrill-seeking hate crimes - Inflicting pain on others gives them a sadistic thrill. 2) Reactive (defensive) hate crimes - rationalize their behavior as a defensive stand taken against outsiders who they believe threaten their community or way of life. 3) Mission hate crimes - Some disturbed individuals see it as their duty to rid the world of evil. 4) Retaliatory hate crimes - committed in response to a hate crime either real or perceived.
8. Workplace violence - the third leading cause of occupational injury or death. The typical offender is a middle-aged white male who faces termination in a worsening economy.
9. Stalking - a course of conduct that is directed at a specific person and involves repeated physical or visual proximity, non-consensual communication, or verbal, written, or implied threats sufficient to cause fear in a reasonable person.
10. Political Violence
  1. Terrorists - systematically murder and destroy or threaten violence to terrorize individuals, groups, communities, or governments into acceding to the terrorists' political demands.
    1. Revolutionary terrorists - violence to frighten those in power and their supporters in an effort to replace the existing government with a regime that holds acceptable political or religious views. Political terrorism - directed at people or groups who oppose the terrorists' political ideology or whom the terrorists define as "outsiders" who must be destroyed. Nationalist terrorism promotes the interests of a minority ethnic or religious group that believes it has been persecuted under majority rule and wishes to carve out its own independent homeland. Cause-Based Terrorists - Some terrorists espouse a particular social or religious cause and use violence to attract followers to their standard. Environmental Terrorists - Radical environmentalists employ violence in an effort to slow down developers who they believe are threatening the environment or harming animals. State-Sponsored Terrorists - Death squads and the use of government troops to destroy political opposition party.
    2. Reasons for terrorism - terrorists are emotionally disturbed individuals who act out their psychosis within the confines of violent groups. A lack of economic opportunity and recession-ary economies are positively correlated with terrorism. Indoctrination into Extremism - educated in religious schools run by strong leaders who demand strict loyalty from their followers while indoctrinating them in political causes.
    3. USA PATRIOT Act (USAPA) - giving law enforcement agencies a freer hand to investigate and apprehend suspected terrorists. Read page 288
  2. Guerrillas - typically located in rural areas and attack military, police, and government targets in an effort to unseat or replace the existing government.
  3. Insurgents - confront the existing government in an effort to wrest away control of all or a portion of its territory, or to force political concessions in sharing political power.
  4. Revolutionaries - nationalists and a sovereign power that holds control of the land, or between the existing government and local groups over issues of ideology and power.

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	Created by Wendy Frogley about 10 years ago