This article examines characteristic elements of male violence that take the form of honor contests. Several examples are drawn from previous investigations of male violence to emphasize that honor contests cross historical and cultural boundaries. Next it analyzes three features of honor contests: (a) characteristics of those who participate (usually male, young, and lower class); (b) the settings where such violence occurs (leisure scenes where young working-class males can circulate and where their leisure involves consumption of alcohol and an audience of other males for the violent episodes); and (c) the interactional dynamics of these contests (consisting of opening moves, countermoves, and then a working agreement to engage in violence). Recognition of this form of violence will contribute to a better-informed theoretical discussion of the masculine nature of lethal violence than is possible through more conventional categories of classification of either social relationships or motivations in cases of homicide.
15This report is an analysis of homicide in situations where the victim and the offender have been involved in a/felationship ofsexual intimacy. It draws upon qualitative analysis of 121 case studies ofhomicide prepared from the files of the Office of the Coroner of Victoria for the years 1985 and 1986. Ofthese, just over half (51%) involved victims and offenders linked by some form ofintimate relationship, while just under one-third (31%) were in a sexual relationship. Gender emerged as a major feature of lethaI violence in such situations of sexual intimacy. Possessiveness was a feature ofmale violence toward their female partners. When the women were younger, this was most often accompanied by jealousy and a history of violen ce, while with older women the homicide most often arose out of the deep depression of the male which led him to commit suicide, with the partner's homicide being part of the suicide plan. Women did not kill their male partners out of jealousy, but instead in most cases were protecting themselves from the earlier violence ofthe male.
In the current literature on rape, frequent reference is made to the attrition of rape cases as these move through the criminal justice system. The present study draws upon national and California secondary data, first, to establish if the hypothesized attrition occurs at key points in the justice system for rape offenses, and then, second, to determine if this attrition is unique from or similar to that experienced with other major felonies. The general conclusion is that, while there is considerable loss of rape cases between the point of initial reporting of an incident to the police and the court sentencing stage, this loss cannot be described as unique to rape. While probably somewhat more rape cases experience attrition in the justice system than is true for homicide, rape seems to show a level of loss comparable to robbery at most points, and certainly lower levels of loss than assault or burglary. These findings hold across time and jurisdictions.It is commonly argued that a distinctive and selective bias operates in the processing of rape cases by the criminal justice system, such that relatively small numbers of rape cases move through the system. Bias is seen as appearing at each of the major points in the criminal justice process. Scroggs, for example, observes (1976:360):Women's rights advocates have called attention to the unfair treatment accorded rape victims by both the police and the courts.... Only a small percentage of those rapists who are brought to trial are convicted. Somewhat more forcefully, Robin (1977:136) argues:Forcible rape is unique among crimes in the manner in which its victims are dealt with by the criminal justice system. Raped women are subjected to an
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