Age, Gender, and the Crime of Crimes: Toward a Life‐course Theory of Genocide Participation*

Abstract

This article asks whether genocide follows the age and gender distributions common to other crime. We develop and test a life‐course model of genocide participation to address this question using a new dataset of 1,068,192 cases tried in Rwanda's gacaca courts. Three types of prosecutions are considered: 1) inciting, organizing, or supervising violence; 2) killings and other physical assaults; and 3) offenses against property. By relying on systematic graphic comparisons, we find that the peak age of those tried in the gacaca courts was 34 years at the time of the genocide, which is older than the peak age for most other types of crime. We likewise find that women were more likely to participate in crimes against property and comparatively unlikely to commit genocidal murder. Symbolic–interactionist explanations of crime suggest people desist from crime as a result of shared understandings of the expectations of adulthood. We argue that this process may be turned on its head during genocide as participants may believe they are defending their communities against a perceived threat. Thus, in contrast to other criminological theories suggesting that people must desist from crime to be accorded adult status, some adults may participate in genocide to fulfill their duties as adult men.

Men Have Gender and Women Are People: A Structural Approach to Gender and Violence

“…Universalizing responsibility for social issues such as climate change detracts from an acknowledgment of the systems and groups primarily responsible for these global harms that disproportionately impact women and other vulnerable populations (Wonders & Danner, 2015). With respect to mass atrocities such as genocide, Nyseth Brehm et al (2016) observed that the de-emphasis of social characteristics such as gender is common in the literature, which often focuses on men but does not analyze gender.…”

“…Gendered violence is more than a moment of aggression; it is the result of a “social template” developed in the years prior to the violence that set the stage for the violence to unfold (Hollander & Pascoe, 2019). Nyseth Brehm et al (2016) illustrated this idea in their research on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The gendered norms, practices, and institutions of manhood and “good citizenship” existed well before the genocide unfolded (Nyseth Brehm et al, 2016).…”

“…Nyseth Brehm et al (2016) illustrated this idea in their research on the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The gendered norms, practices, and institutions of manhood and “good citizenship” existed well before the genocide unfolded (Nyseth Brehm et al, 2016). “Boys were charged with shepherding livestock and were often taught combat techniques, whereas men performed heavy labor,” noted Nyseth Brehm et al (2016), continuing that, “Men were also expected to defend the country by serving in the armed forces” (p. 720), whereas girls were expected to do chores and women were tasked with managing households.…”

The Life Course of Pol Pot: How his Early Life Influenced the Crimes he Committed

“…30 The literature within international criminology continues to grow in sophistication and nuance as more field-research is done and scholars increasingly seek to move beyond the sociopsychological experiments that dominated the field for such a long time. 31 Traditional theories are currently modified and refined to the specific circumstances of international crimes 32 , new theories are developed within criminology and related disciplines 33 and more traditional theories, including life course analysis 34 , are used to study the perpetrators of international crimes. The focus of the abovementioned literature, however, continues to lay predominantly with the lower ranking perpetrators.…”

Subnational Determinants of Killing in Rwanda*

“…This indicator is not significantly associated with the level of violence. Given recent findings that many perpetrators were in their mid‐30s (Nyseth Brehm, Uggen, and Gasanabo, ), model 4 assesses the percentage of middle‐aged men, which is also not significantly associated with the level of violence.…”