Search results

1 – 10 of over 4000
Book part
Publication date: 6 September 2018

Melissa J. Tetzlaff-Bemiller

Purpose – This chapter aims to present an overview of what constitutes child murder, including definitions, history, prevalence, risk factors, offender motivations, and…

Abstract

Purpose – This chapter aims to present an overview of what constitutes child murder, including definitions, history, prevalence, risk factors, offender motivations, and theoretical understanding.

Design/methodology/approach – The author uses secondary data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System, Uniformed Crime Reports, and Vital Statistics to show comparisons with previously conducted research. This allows for an overview of child murder.

Findings – There are numerous inconsistencies due to methodological issues. It is hard to find studies where a large sample was used. Definitions of child vary between studies, as does the age categories used. In addition, child homicide is predicted to be grossly underrepresented due to lack of communication between agencies, lack of formalized training, lack of a formalized classification system, and lack of reporting.

Originality/value – Research on child homicide can be instrumental in many areas including policy creation, implementation, and evaluation. It can serve as a benefit for those attempting to provide preventative measures. It may also help law enforcement with investigation. It is only through continued analysis of these types of cases and vigilant research, policy, and practice that society can more effectively protect young children from exposure to potentially murderous outcomes.

Details

Homicide and Violent Crime
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-876-5

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 28 May 2021

Francine Tyler

Purpose: One of the objectives of this research was to identify whether “mad”, “bad” and “sad” frames, identified in modern news reporting in other Western nations, are also…

Abstract

Purpose: One of the objectives of this research was to identify whether “mad”, “bad” and “sad” frames, identified in modern news reporting in other Western nations, are also evident in historical newspapers in New Zealand, a nation geographically distant. Methodology/approach: Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze reporting of multiple-child murders in New Zealand between 1870 and 1930. Content was sourced from a digitized newspaper database and identified media frames were analyzed under the categories of “mad”, “bad” and “sad”. Findings: Historical New Zealand media constructed “mad,” “bad,” and “sad” frames for the killers, however, instead of being classified with a single frame many killers were portrayed using a combination of two or even three. In some cases, media ignored facts which could have provided an alternative portrayal of the killers. In other cases, no obvious frames were employed. Research limitations: This research does not include analysis of media frame building in modern news reporting. Originality/value: Media construction of frames for multiple-child killers in historical New Zealand news reporting has not been explored before.

Details

Mass Mediated Representations of Crime and Criminality
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-759-3

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 April 2019

Sherry A. Thompson and Brooke Thompson

The purpose of this paper is to share nascent theory, suggesting there are five types of parricide offenders. The old theories are not valid: child abuse is not the primary…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to share nascent theory, suggesting there are five types of parricide offenders. The old theories are not valid: child abuse is not the primary motivator for parricide events.

Design/methodology/approach

This research draws on archival data derived from public sources (i.e. court records, offender statements, newspapers, etc.).

Findings

Child abuse is not the primary motivator for youthful parricide events. However, it appears to remain a factor in the parricide equation. The Good Child Postulate romanticizes youthful parricide offenders and could introduce potentially harmful positive bias into investigations, trials and treatment. The nascent theory suggests the five fatal personality clusters for youthful parricide offenders.

Research limitations/implications

The identified clusters are still being developed and statistically validated. More research and analysis is needed to delimit, refine and verify the five fatal personality types of parricide offenders and to create a clear, cohesive theory.

Practical implications

Murder in general has decreased over the past decade, parricides have not. A better understanding of the phenomena may help to slow the rate of parricide events. Law enforcement, natal families and the courts can help to improve rehabilitative outcomes if children could be recognized as the type of killer they are and treated differently during the investigative and defense phases of their cases. For example, if parents are placed on trial (i.e. are used by defense to mitigate/excuse the murders), some types of children will adopt the defense arguments laid out in court and feel no need for rehabilitation at all. Families of the murdered parents can come to a better understanding of what has happened – allowing them to grieve without being forced to defend the murder of their love one. This research serves as further correction for the promulgation of the notion that all parents who are victims of youthful parricide abused the perpetrator, thereby causing their own deaths. This does occur on occasion, but is not a complete picture of the phenomenon.

Social implications

Although murder, in general, has decreased over the past decade, parricides have not. The standing typology stymies fresh research and researcher’s abilities to explore models that may help to teach parents, law enforcement and other caring members of society how to prevent parricides in the future. Additionally, the Good Child Postulate works to create positive bias in the courtroom as attorneys for well-off, white children can easily build an imperfect defense for a population that is not actually the abused population. This has many social justice implications.

Originality/value

This information can be utilized by law enforcement, attorneys, the courts, parents and the prisons/therapeutic settings to better meet the needs of the youthful parricide offender.

Details

Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice, vol. 5 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2056-3841

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Criminal Justice Responses to Maternal Filicide: Judging the failed mother
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83909-621-1

Article
Publication date: 10 February 2012

Hilary Brown

This paper seeks to reconcile society's need to apply strong sanctions to parents who are responsible for the murder of a disabled adult while also recognising the stresses…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper seeks to reconcile society's need to apply strong sanctions to parents who are responsible for the murder of a disabled adult while also recognising the stresses present in their lives.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper reviews six cases in which seven disabled adults were killed by a parent in the UK between 1999 and 2009.

Findings

The review found that these were no ordinary crimes and nor were they motivated by malice, but occurred against a backdrop of significant mental illness and distress. In addition, two of the parents killed themselves as well as their adult child and another attempted suicide. The explanations offered in court to account for the murders included a combination of caregiver stress and mercy killing and the courts struggled to find a consistent approach.

Research limitations/implications

The review is limited to cases reported in the press and only considers information in the public domain. The portrayal of the issues in the media is integral to the study. The cases reported in this paper are a sub‐set of a larger sample of children and adults murdered by caregivers during this period.

Originality/value

The paper compares and contrasts some features of these high‐profile cases, commenting on the way they were addressed in the courts and making recommendations as to how the backdrop of significant mental ill‐health could be taken into account in the way families are offered support with a view to preventing further tragedies.

Details

The Journal of Adult Protection, vol. 14 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1466-8203

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 2 August 2023

Denise Buiten

Filicide, the killing of a child by a parent, is one of the only crimes committed by women and men in roughly equal numbers. Women's violence against their children, however, more…

Abstract

Filicide, the killing of a child by a parent, is one of the only crimes committed by women and men in roughly equal numbers. Women's violence against their children, however, more profoundly confounds common understandings of the links between gender and family violence, leading to its ambivalent treatment within the media. When men kill their children, they are usually characterised as either monsters or as sad, failed men. When women kill their children, they are usually represented as bad mothers or mad mothers suffering under the burdens of the pathological female body. In both cases, a mental illness/distress lens is common, though how it manifests is inflected by gender. This chapter examines recent Australian news representations of maternal filicide-suicide. Focussing on the mental illness/distress frame in news, it examines the ideological work this frame does in decontextualising and de-gendering maternal filicide, framing women's mental illness/distress in ‘psychocentric’ terms that strip it of political or social significance and subjecting it to an individualised lens that obscures the gendered aetiologies of women's use of violence.

Details

The Emerald International Handbook of Feminist Perspectives on Women’s Acts of Violence
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80382-255-6

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 25 May 2017

Marvin D. Free

To examine gender and racial differences in known wrongful conviction cases.

Abstract

Purpose

To examine gender and racial differences in known wrongful conviction cases.

Methodology/approach

Cases were identified for inclusion in this study through the use of established databases available electronically. Supplemental information was gathered through newspapers, magazines, and direct correspondence with individuals associated with the cases.

Findings

Of special significance was the role of witness error in wrongful convictions. Although more prominent in cases involving African American men, witness error was also problematic in murder and manslaughter cases involving African American women. Whereas white women were more likely to be included in wrongful convictions for murder and child abuse, African American women were more likely to be found in wrongful convictions for drugs and property and other offenses. Wrongfully convicted white women were 2.7 times more likely than their African American counterparts to be sentenced to life. Victim race appeared to play a role in a number of the wrongful convictions for both African American men and women.

Originality/value

This study expands our knowledge of known wrongful convictions among African Americans, a group that is disproportionately found in the criminal justice data.

Details

Race, Ethnicity and Law
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-604-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 2 August 2023

Belinda Morrissey

Murder is overwhelmingly a male affair (UNODC Global Study on Homicide, 2019). So, when women kill, their crimes gain a lot of attention and even more hysteria in both courts and…

Abstract

Murder is overwhelmingly a male affair (UNODC Global Study on Homicide, 2019). So, when women kill, their crimes gain a lot of attention and even more hysteria in both courts and media. This chapter will analyse the cases of Sally Challen, Belinda van Krevel and Maxine Carr to show that portrayals of women who are involved in killing exist on a continuum, from abused victims to those simply ‘born evil’ to the incomprehension of those whose crimes render them outside society altogether; or in simple terms, from sad, to bad, to mad. In all cases, the agency of the women is presented as incomplete or impossible, indicating our inability in heteropatriarchy to acknowledge that women are as capable as men of exhibiting the full spectrum of human behaviour. Denying agency, particularly to violent women, allows Western societies to avoid having to face and thus, attempt to understand, the female capacity for aggression.

Details

The Emerald International Handbook of Feminist Perspectives on Women’s Acts of Violence
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80382-255-6

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 2 August 2023

Joanna Bourke

Myra Hindley is typically described as an ‘icon of evil’. In the 1960s, Hindley and her boyfriend Ian Brady sexually tortured and murdered at least two girls and three boys, aged…

Abstract

Myra Hindley is typically described as an ‘icon of evil’. In the 1960s, Hindley and her boyfriend Ian Brady sexually tortured and murdered at least two girls and three boys, aged between 10 and 17 years, in the Manchester area of the UK. All except one were sexually assaulted. She has provoked a huge amount of public commentary for more than three and a half decades after her conviction. This chapter asks how Hindley's actions were understood and interpreted at the time. Central themes are the concept ‘evil’, sexual violence, pornography, permissive society and patriarchy, as refracted through gender and class.

Details

The Emerald International Handbook of Feminist Perspectives on Women’s Acts of Violence
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80382-255-6

Keywords

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