Exploration of Crime-Scene Characteristics in Juvenile Homicide in the French-Speaking Part of Belgium

Abstract

This study explores modeling crime-scene characteristics of juvenile homicide in the French-speaking part of Belgium. Multidimensional scaling analysis was carried out on crime-scene characteristics derived from the court files of 67 individuals under 22 years old, who had been charged with murder or attempted murder (1995-2009). Three thematic regions (Expressive: multiple offenders; Instrumental: theft; Instrumental: sex/forensic awareness) distinguished types of aggression displayed during the offense. These themes reaffirm that the expressive-instrumental differentiation found in general homicide studies is valuable when attempting to discriminate juvenile homicides. The proposed framework was found useful to classify the offenses, as 84% of homicides were assigned to a dominant theme. Additionally, associations between crime-scene characteristics and offenders' characteristics were analyzed, but no associations were found, therefore failing to provide empirical support for the homology assumption. Cultural comparisons, as well as the influence of age on the thematic structure are discussed.

Exploration of Crime Scene Characteristics in Cyber-Related Homicides

“…This thematic region reflects a predatory pattern of behavior, in which the victim may have been used as a vehicle to satisfy the perpetrators’ needs. A modulating facet in terms of frequencies, although not as clear-cut as in some other studies (e.g., Gerard, Whitfield, & Browne, 2017), can be observed with most of the higher frequencies agglomerated in the middle of the plot, and lower frequencies located on the outskirts of the plot. All KR-20 values are more than 0.5 but the lower values of some of the regions might be explained by the values’ sensitivity to the number of variables within the analysis (Häkkänen et al, 2004), and a higher number of themes (i.e., four themes), which tends to reduce the alpha coefficients (Alison & Stein, 2001).…”

Exploration of socio-family and psychological characteristics of young males convicted of murder or attempted murder in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina

“…Information on the victim-victimizer relationship and the homicide characteristics (its classification in instrumental or expressive type categories, or whether it occurred within the context of other criminal or peer-conflict actions) would have allowed a deeper analysis of homicidal behavior of the subjects, as well as its comparison with international studies. (73,74) Therefore, this limitation should be considered in future works.…”

The Action System Model: A Typology of Spanish Homicides

“…Finally, data purging was performed in order to thoroughly analyze the quality of the information and prepare a matrix for statistical analysis. Variables were dichotomized according to the presence (1) or absence (0) of homicide behavior or characteristics (Canter and Heritage, 1990;Canter and Fritzon, 1998;Gerard et al, 2017).…”