Abstract:
Over the past two decades, femicide-the gender-based killing of women or girls-has become an issue of international concern. Yet relatively little data on perpetrators exist. Current research primarily focuses on individual risk factors with less attention on community and societal factors. We use a social capital approach to examine femicide by analyzing the extent to which crime perpetrators experience and perceive social punishment (exclusion) from their social networks. Using a quota sampling strategy, we administered a cross-sectional questionnaire to perpetrators of femicide (N = 71), male-male homicide (N = 73), and other serious crimes (N = 64) across four prisons in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Other crime perpetrators served as a control to the two lethal crime groups. Perceived social capital scores were assigned based on responses to two scales adapted from the World Bank\'s \"Integrated Questionnaire for the Measurement of Social Capital.\" Before committing murder, femicide and homicide perpetrators\' scores were not statistically different. Yet after the crime, femicide perpetrators retained significantly greater scores than homicide perpetrators. The perceived social capital scores of other crime perpetrators did not change after the commission of their crimes. As a secondary objective, we examined the individual and social contexts of femicide perpetrators. Most (85%) of the femicide perpetrators could name at least one other person in their social network whom they knew to be physically violent during disagreements with their partner, while 11% stated that \"everyone\" they knew used violence during disagreements. Although the penalty for committing femicide and homicide is ostensibly equivalent-a life sentence of 50 years-we found that the informal social punishment femicide perpetrators perceived is less severe than that experienced by homicide perpetrators. These data indicate a lack of social punishment for femicide, compared to other crimes, showing social legitimization of the crime. These findings support the development of community-level interventions to prevent femicide.
摘要:
在过去的二十年里,杀害妇女——基于性别的杀害妇女或女孩——已成为国际关注的问题。然而,关于肇事者的数据相对较少。目前的研究主要集中在个人危险因素,而对社区和社会因素的关注较少。我们使用社会资本方法通过分析犯罪者在社交网络中经历和感知社会惩罚(排斥)的程度来检查杀害妇女的行为。使用配额抽样策略,我们对杀害妇女的肇事者进行了横断面调查问卷(N=71),男性-男性凶杀(N=73),和其他严重犯罪(N=64)在布宜诺斯艾利斯的四个监狱,阿根廷。其他犯罪者是两个致命犯罪集团的控制。根据对世界银行“社会资本测量综合问卷”的两个量表的响应,分配了感知的社会资本分数。“在犯下谋杀罪之前,杀害妇女和杀人犯的得分没有统计学差异。然而,在犯罪之后,女性杀人犯的得分明显高于杀人犯。其他犯罪人的社会资本得分在犯罪后没有改变。作为次要目标,我们研究了杀害女性者的个人和社会背景。大多数(85%)杀害女性的肇事者可以在他们的社交网络中至少说出另一个人,他们知道在与伴侣的分歧中身体暴力,而11%的人表示,他们认识的“每个人”在分歧期间使用暴力。尽管对杀害妇女和杀人的惩罚表面上是等同的-无期徒刑50年-我们发现,对杀害妇女的犯罪者的非正式社会惩罚不如杀人犯的严厉。这些数据表明,对杀害妇女缺乏社会惩罚,与其他犯罪相比,显示犯罪的社会合法性。这些发现支持社区一级干预措施的发展,以防止杀害妇女。