Murder: Social and Historical Approaches to Understanding Murder and Murderers

• NCJ Number: 214528
• Author(s): Shani D'Cruze; Sandra Walklate; Samantha Pegg
• Date Published: 2006
• Length: 188 pages
• Sale Source: Willan Publishing
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This book focuses on different types of interpersonal murder, exploring the various ways society has categorized murderers as pathological.

Abstract

Overall, the book employs a social construction perspective to explore the social and cultural response to the crime of interpersonal murder. The chapters explore different types of murder, all with the intention of exploring how the murderer has been framed over time as pathological, or “not like us.” Chapter 1 offers an introduction to the book and presents the legal definition of interpersonal murder, examines sources of information about murder, identifies the nature and prevalence of interpersonal murder, and examines the impact of murder on families and communities. Chapter 2 focuses on the social construction of murderers as evil and examines the ways in which criminological explanations of murder are grounded in the presumption of the pathological murderer. Chapter 3 moves on to a discussion of women who kill, focusing on the cases of three female murderers to illustrate how the media and the criminal justice system have limited “stock narratives” through which to explain a female’s act of murder. In chapter 4, the authors consider murderous children and argue that when faced with children who kill, adults have an overwhelming need to retain the social constructed characteristics of childhood in order to avoid a moral panic. Chapter 5 focuses on the murder of intimates by men and shows how murder is not a random act, but instead carries complex meanings in different social situations. Chapter 6 continues the focus on murderous men by exploring the meanings underlying the murders of friends and acquaintances. In chapter 7 the authors bring together what has been learned in chapters 1 through 6 to contend that the consistent observation about the social response to murder has been the driving need to construct the murderer, and sometimes even the victim, as pathological--not like us. References, index