From Right to Left it Had No End: Pursuits

 

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. 

 

These motives betterment measures (like job training, family counseling, and educational enhancement) are often advocated as corrective actions to abate the conditions that motivate instrumental crimes. Crime control efforts through environmental design and situational crime prevention techniques may be equally effective for both instrumental and expressive crimes, by increasing the costs for the reasoning instrumental offender and decreasing the opportunities for spontaneous or expressive criminality.  Regardless of the particular crime control strategy, however, it is widely assumed that instrumental and expressive crimes are unique in the characteristics of their offenders, victims, and situational elements.

 

When applied to the study of homicide, particular circumstances and motivations are often categorized as either instrumental or expressive crimes. Arguments, brawls, romantic triangles, youth gang killings, and other inter-personal disputes are typically classified as expressive acts because their dominant motivation is the violence itself. 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.

 

Most muggers do not intend to kill their victims, but the precipitating actions that result in the robbery are clearly motivated by instrumental pursuits. Youth crime, especially when it occurs in a group context, is often described as impulsive, situational and opportunistic, spontaneous, and non-utilitarian. Street fights are the major triggering event in gang-related homicides, providing additional support for the classification of youth gang homicides as expressive offenses. However, for other homicide situations (e.g, revenge or “payback” killings), it is difficult to classify motive unequivocally on an instrumental-expressive dichotomy.

 

Street gang violence may result from instrumental, entrepreneurial activities, such as drug trafficking, whereas other violent gang situations involve impulsive, emotional, expressive outbursts. While the instrumental-expressive distinction is widely used in criminological research and policy, there is still debate about its usefulness and validity as a basis for differentiating types of crime. Research in this area often assumes that instrumental and expressive motives are conceptually distinct, producing qualitatively different types of crime. However, some researchers argue that instrumental and expressive acts are best viewed as polar ends of a continuum, thus allowing for the possibility that a crime contains elements of both. 

 

 

The major variables include type of homicide, offender characteristics, victim characteristics, and situational elements. Offender, victim, and situational elements are used to examine the common and unique configurations that underlie instrumental and expressive homicides.

 

The specific offender characteristics used to differentiate types of homicide include gender, race, and age. Similar variables are included as victim characteristics. Situational elements involve the victim-offender relationship, gun use, and location of the homicide. The race of the offender and victim is coded as either White, African-American, or Hispanic. The age of the offender and victim includes the categories “less than 20,” “20 to 39 years old,” and “40 and over.” Our selection of these particular categories is based on the growing public interest in youth homicide and the underlying age distributions.

 

Criminologists have employed the fundamental distinction between instrumental and expressive motivations across a variety of crime types. Whether these two general motivations for homicide are associated with either common or unique combinations of offender, victim, and situational elements.

 

 

Acknowledgements:

www.aivd.nl    AIVD ©

Algemene Bestuursdienst – @Erik Akerboom ©

www.politie.nl  Politiekorpschef  @Janny Knol©

www.politie.nl WEB Politie - @Henk van Essen©

https://english.marechaussee.nl  Royal Netherlands Marechaussee    @Willem-Alexander King of the Netherlands©

PolitieAcademie - https://www.politieacademie.nl/en©

 Author: W.R. Łaskawiec ©

 

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