A Sociological Analysis of Homicide: Identifying Risk Factors

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Associate Professor at Tehran University

Abstract

Homicide is one of the most serious offences that can create serious damage to all those affected, to the murderer, the victim, their families and members of their local community, and it can also challenge the feeling of social safety. By applying the phenomenological approach and concentrating on data which is collected by a semi deep structured interview from 14 murderers, including 12 men and 2 women, the present research tries to understand and identify the risk factors which could explain why and how murder took place.
The concluding points of in-depth interviews, reveal that to understand homicide, one needs to pay attention to the sequence of antisocial behavior and to those risk factors that have affected the life style at the individual, family, community and societal level. The issue of how deviant behavior from an early age has developed and turned into something else during the course of a person’s lifetime, is also looked in to. In other words, the behavior which is a cornerstone which affects other behavior, should be recognized, even if it is non-criminal behavior that could be drawn into criminal behavior later in life or implied to be a deviant behavior.
In-depth interviews indicate that the majority of respondents in their childhood, are somehow involved in various anti-social behavior such as vagrancy, truancy, pigeon game, aggression, harassment, animal abuse and evil and deviant behavior which has developed during the course of their lives, so the identification of risk factors and the interaction between them is an important factor.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Social Problems of Iran
Volume 5, Issue 2 - Serial Number 2
Autumn & Winter
November 2014
Pages 191-218

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