Instrumental and Expressive Homicides

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There are various ways to classify types of criminal homicide. State statutes distinguish between criminal and non-criminal homicides, degrees of murders, and types of manslaughters. Law enforcement agencies often categorize homicides according to the characteristics of the offender (e.g., gang versus non-gang), the victim (e.g., child murders, teen violence, elderly victims), or situational context or attributes (e.g., domestic violence, stranger assaults, drive-by shootings, robbery- murders, road rage, or workplace homicides). Lawyers, social scientists, and law enforcers also classify homicides in terms of motive. Common motives for homicides include trivial altercations, jealousy, revenge, romantic triangles, robbery, sexual assault, burglary, and disputes in drug transactions. The research examines whether instrumental and expressive homicides are qualitatively different in their social context (i.e., combinations of offender, victim, and situational characteristics). We do this empirically by identifying the most prevalent combinations of individual and situational elements unique to each type of homicide, as well as those common to both, through a systematic process of holistic comparison. The distinction between instrumental and expressive crimes has been widely used in criminological research. Instrumental crimes are those conducted for explicit, future goals (such as to acquire money or improve one’s social position), whereas expressive offenses are often unplanned acts of anger, rage, or frustration. The instrumental–expressive distinction often parallels the differences between planned (premeditated) and spontaneous (“heat of passion”) offenses. Violent crimes are often distinguished from other offenses (like corporate crime) based on their relative frequency of instrumental and expressive motives. Expressive crimes are often viewed as undeterrable by legal sanctions. Other crime prevention and intervention strategies are also tied directly to the instrumental–expressive distinction. Killings that occur in the commission of another felony are the most commonly classified instrumental homicides. While many homicides in these felony-type circumstances are often a side effect of another criminal act,  these killings are usually classified as instrumental crimes because the death of the victim is a potentially expected outcome in the pursuit of the primary goal. Even expressive acts of violence done in anger reflect an instrumental reaction to perceived wrongdoing. Instrumental homicides involve all felony-type circumstances such as robbery, rape, burglary, drug offenses, motor vehicle theft, and other felony-type situations. While murders that occur during robberies are often portrayed as the ultimate instrumental homicide, they share a similar social context to instrumental homicides in only about one third of these crimes. Fewer than 10% of homicides involving narcotic law violations or gambling have social contexts that are unique to instrumental homicides, with the vast majority of these homicides involving combinations of individual and situational factors that are common to both instrumental and expressive homicides.

The most important conclusion that comes up from the analysis is that characterization of homicides as either instrumental, expressive, or a combination of the two is a complex issue. The treatment of instrumental-expressive crimes as a simple dichotomy results in a gross misrepresentation of both.

Acknowledgements

The Police Department; 
https://www.politie.nl/mijnbuurt/politiebureaus/05/burgwallen.html and a Chief Inspector – Mr. Erik Akerboom                                 ©

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