Extreme prejudice: A behavioral analysis of bias -motivated homicides.
Item
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Title
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Extreme prejudice: A behavioral analysis of bias -motivated homicides.
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Identifier
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AAI3283722
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identifier
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3283722
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Creator
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Fisher, Christopher M.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Gabrielle Salfati
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Date
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2007
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Sociology, Criminology and Penology
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Abstract
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The overall study - rooted in the conceptualization of bias-motivated homicide as an interpersonal interaction - was based on the hypothesis that there would be a thematic consistency between the behaviors engaged in by offenders at crime scenes and in their previous interpersonal interactions and characteristics. It was further hypothesized that the themes present in the crime scenes and the offender backgrounds would reflect aspects of Expressive and Instrumental aggression. Finally, it also was hypothesized that these two styles of bias-motivated homicide would be associated with different motivating biases.;The analyses were based on 91 cases of bias-motivated homicides reported to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports system in the first ten years (1992-2002) following the passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act (1991). These cases all were solved by local police and provided information that was content analyzed to generate variables representing both the behaviors offenders engaged in at the crime scenes as well as the background experiences and characteristics of the offenders. The variables first were analyzed using bi-variate statistics and then with Multidimensional Scaling techniques.;The theoretical results provided general support for the hypotheses. Both bias-motivated homicide crime scenes and offender background behaviors can be differentiated in terms of the Expressive or Instrumental role that the victim played for the offender. Specifically, this study found the dichotomy was clearest if Expressive bias-motivated homicides were viewed as incidents where the victim was a specific target and Instrumental bias-motivated homicides as incidents where the victim was a means unto some other ends. Overall, it was possible to thematically link offender crime scene behaviors to their background characteristics - a finding that supports the motivation of this study: to assist investigators who are working with crime scene evidence by providing an empirically-validated method of narrowing down the list of potential suspects.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
