Victim Precipitated Homicide Essay

The term victim-precipitated homicide refers to those killings, which the victim is a direct, positive precipitator of the incident. Victim-precipitated homicide is, therefore, an act of suicide and the term refers to those incidents in which an individual, determined on self-destruction, engages in a calculated life-threatening criminal incident in order to force a police officer or another individual to kill him or herself (Parent, 1996).
- Victim-Precipitated Homicide - 1958 Study of homicide in Philadelphia found it was not uncommon for the victim of a homicide to have been involved in the events that led to his death. The victim may have also initiated the incident that led to their death.
Victim-Precipitated homicide: Homicide incidents
- Wolf gang determined that 150 cases or 26% of the 588 homicides examined in Philadelphia were victim-precipitated. He also found that the victim in each case was more likely to be African American and male than in non-precipitated cases. - In the Victim-precipitated cases 94 percent of the victims were male while in non- victim-precipitated only 70% were male. Also 80% of the victims in victim-precipitated were African American in contrast to 70%. - Women were found to make up 29% of offenders in victim-precipitated homicides while in non-victim-precipitated homicides they only made up 14%. The differences here may indicate that women may have been provoked by males in these situations. Further more it is possible that the male was violet towards the women due to the male seeing them as challenging their masculinity or otherwise disrespecting them. As such some of these homicides may very well be confrontational homicides. - Certainly all cases of homicide that involve women are not always the cause of confrontation or domestic violence. Victim/Offender Relationship - In 1958 Wolfgang found that homicide was more likely to occur between individuals who had some type of relationship. - Further