Domestic abuse continues to be a growing concern across the globe where the overwhelming majority of victims are women. Women also tend to experience more severe forms of violence, which includes murder. There is growing recognition that children who live in households where domestic abuse exists are directly harmed and often show psychological…

Growing up in socioeconomic disadvantage increases risk of peer bullying at school. Both socioeconomic status and involvement in bullying are predictive of a range of adverse developmental outcomes. However, neither (a) the mechanisms whereby disadvantage increases bullying risk nor (b) the developmental outcomes for which bullying may mediate…

Doing sensitive research presents particular problems over and above other social science research because of the nature of the issues being asked about and their potential impact on both the participant and the researcher. In some instances, the factors that engage the researcher in the project may also be of interest to advocates who are working…

Background: Violence committed against young women, and in some cases young men, who are considered to have violated honor-based norms are reported in several countries, making honor-based violence (HBV) a global concern. This article is an overview of research in this area and summarizes key findings from a Swedish program of research dedicated…

Women represent a relatively small percentage of known violent offenders, a disproportionality in offending that increases as the severity of the crime increases. The exception is intimate partner homicide where some studies find U.S. rates of offending by women approach those of men. Although the literature makes clear that significant gender…

The present study examined gender differences in intimate partner homicide (IPH) and offender characteristics with the focus on putative gender-specific risk factors in a nationwide consecutive sample of homicide offenders. Data on all offenders (N = 642; 91 females, 551 males) convicted of homicide and subjected to a forensic psychiatric…

Warrantless arrest laws for domestic violence (DV) are generally classified as discretionary, preferred, or mandatory, based on the level of power accorded to police in deciding whether to arrest. However, there is a lack of consensus in the literature regarding how each state's law should be categorized. Using three classification schemes, this…

We examine what types of violent offenses tend to be planned using self-report data from a nationally representative sample of state and federal inmates. We find mixed support for the idea that predatory offenses are more likely to be planned than dispute-related offenses. As expected, robbery offenders are much more likely to report that they…

This study investigated homicide-suicide in Durban, South Africa, for the years 2000 to 2001. The incidence was 0.89 per 100,000, higher than the international average. A majority of perpetrators (91%) and victims (87%) were Black African, proportional to their representation in the population. Perpetrators were typically men (in 95% of cases),…

Filicide, the murder of a child by its parents, is sometimes accompanied by suicide of the perpetrator. Few studies have examined the differences between suicidal and non-suicidal filicides, as data sources often lack detailed information regarding psychiatric factors as well as the motives underlying the offence. This descriptive, exploratory…

Intimate partner violence (IPV) constitutes the majority of assaults against women in the United States, and greater than one third of female homicide victims are murdered by an intimate partner. In a small percentage of cases, battered women kill their abusers, and evidence of battering and its effects may be used to support a plea of…

This qualitative case study explores one American Indian (AI) woman's experience of intimate partner violence and the subsequent murder of her abusive partner. The lens of complex personhood (Gordon, 1997) has been applied as a method for understanding "Annie's" multiple identities of AI woman, victim of intimate partner violence, mother, and…

The Danger Assessment (DA) is an instrument designed to assess the likelihood of lethality or near lethality occurring in a case of intimate partner violence. This article describes the development, psychometric validation, and suggestions for use of the DA. An 11-city study of intimate partner femicide used multivariate analysis to test the…

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the state of the science on uxoricide, including qualitative findings on 47 survivors. Two qualitative interviews were conducted between January 2004 and January 2005 with 47 convenience sample adult survivors of uxoricide. Data were analyzed using hermeneutic analysis. A number of themes…

The heterogeneity of domestic violent men has long been established. However, research has failed to examine this phenomenon among men committing the most severe form of domestic violence. This study aims to use a multi-dimensional approach to empirically construct a classification system of men who are incarcerated for the murder of their female…