Causes of Murder and Homicide

Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology

HM-321: Sociology and Human Behavior

Semester Project

CAUSES OF MURDER AND HOMICIDE

Submitted to: Dr. Nawab Khan

GROUP MEMBERS:
Emad ul haq Haseeb haider Mubarak Hussain Sadiq ullah Sami ullah
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Causes of Murder and Homicide

Human Life is really precious, more than anything in this universe; it is really depressing to realize that now days it is really easy to take anyones life may be just by a bullet of RS 12. There is an ultimate need of realizing the importance of human life, we all should think on the prevention strategies both on individual and social level.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As a group, we would like to thank Dr. Nawab Khan for sharing his experiences and guiding us through the HM-321 course of Sociology and Human Behavior. Without his support the making of this report would have been nearly impossible. Our understanding of the subject matter was enhanced greatly because of Dr. Nawab's efforts, and this fact is clearly reflected in this report. Thus, we would like to show our appreciation for these efforts by dedicating this report to Dr. Nawab and the whole of the Humanities Department here at Giki.

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Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................6 Homicide as a Conflict Assay .........................................................................................7 Homicide .........................................................................................................................9 Theoretical Perspective ...............................................................................................9 Durkheims Theory of Homicide and the Confusion of the Empirical Literature ....10 Literary Perspectives ................................................................................................10 Psychological Perspective .........................................................................................11 Child Homicide .............................................................................................................13 Homicidal Crimes ........................................................................................................16 Main Kinds of homicide...............................................................................................17 Culpable Homicide ...................................................................................................17 A. Murder .........................................................................................................18 Exclusions .....................................................................................................19 Basic Elements of Murder: ...................................................................................19 Victim: ..................................................................................................................20 Mitigating circumstances: .....................................................................................20 Insanity:.................................................................................................................20 Felony: ..................................................................................................................21 Assassination: .......................................................................................................22 B. C. Manslaughter: .................................................................................................22 Homicide by Abuse: ........................................................................................23

Non Culpable Homicide ...............................................................................................23 Excusable Homicide: ..............................................................................................24 Types of Homicide on base of Person being killed .....................................................25 Causes of Homicide .....................................................................................................26 HM321 PROJECT REPORT

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Homicide Mortality Rates and Age Patterns of Suicide .............................................28 Conclusion....................................................................................................................29 References ....................................................................................................................30

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Introduction
In the modern society, man seems to be getting more and more frustrated. Violent outbursts are becoming common, and irrational behavior seems to a norm of the local news. In a society, where such conditions prevail, it is mandatory that we properly study this behavior. The extreme of this behavior causes killings, murders and homicides of various kinds. Such a situation can also be seen in Pakistan. All that we need to do is pick up the local paper and we will find ample instances of such behavior. This report does not only aim to directly tackle the issue, as it concerns to Pakistan, but it tries to adhere to the topic on a universal scale. This report aims to explore all the possible causes of murder and homicide, and shed due light on the sociological factors involved with in it. At the end of a study of this report, is it hoped that the reader will have a much better understanding of the causes of murders and homicides, and hence, will be better equipped to deal with it, and prevent it in real life.

Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest. W.H.Auden

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Homicide as a Conflict Assay

The proposition that expected fitness is the currency underlying perceptions of self-interest entails an implicit theory about where interests intersect and where they diverge. If the exigencies that enhance person A's expected fitness enhance person B's, too, then we may expect that the two will perceive their interests as harmonious, and each will ordinarily be happy to let the other pursue his or her aims unobstructed. An example is the case of monogamous mates with a shared interest in the welfare of their offspring. Conversely, two creatures are likely to perceive their interests as discordant, and hence to experience conflict, to the degree that the exigencies that raise ones expected fitness diminish the other's. Each party suffers when the other actively promotes its self-interest, and inclinations to thwart one another are likely. An example is the case of rivals for the same mate. Clearly, where interpersonal violence is a response to apprehended conflict, this conceptual framework has implications about who is likely to use violence against whom and About the circumstances that will exacerbate or mitigate the risk of violence in particular relationship categories. That has been the unifying idea behind our evolutionary psychological approach to the epidemiology of homicide (Daly & Wilson, 1988a, 1988b, 1997; Wilson & Daly, 1985, 1993a, 1996). Any theory of the nature of human conflict ought to shed some light on who is likely to kill whom, when, why, and under what circumstances. Homicides are extreme manifestations of interpersonal conflict and, for that reason, are detected and recorded in a more reliable, less biased way than more frequent but less extreme types of conflict behavior such as assaults and slanders. An assay, such as the color change that an acid induces in litmus paper or the adulatory behavior that a pregnant woman's urine induces in a frog, is a conspicuous manifestation of some otherwise cryptic quantity of interest. Because they are relatively reliably detected and recorded, Homicides provide a conflict assay-- an index of relationship-specific, demographic, and situational variations in the intensity of interpersonal conflict. It must be emphasized that

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using homicides as an assay of the evolved psychology of interpersonal conflict does not presuppose that killing is (or even that it necessarily ever was) an effective way to promote one's fitness. There may or may not be aspects of the human psyche that have been shaped by selection to deal specifically with lethal intraspecific conflict, but that is immaterial for present purposes. Regardless of whether killing is interpreted as effective self-interested action or as a verreactive "mistake:' we may expect that the factors that exacerbate or mitigate conflict will raise or lower the likelihood of homicide accordingly. In so far as killings represent the extreme tail of a distribution-rare products of psychological processes whose more usual, nonlethal manifestations have useful social effects such as successful resource expropriation, deterrence of infidelity, coercion, and intimidation--then factors that influence the likelihood of violence in the pursuit of these valuable social outcomes may be expected to affect the risk of homicide, too. Although homicides are often, perhaps typically, overreactions whose net effects are not in the perpetrators' interests, it does not follow that violence is pathology.

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Homicide
Although the developmental perspective has become a leading paradigm in criminology, little attention has been paid to the onset of offending and life course of murderers within this tradition. We use bivariate and Multiple Correspondence Analysis to investigate the life course and criminal careers of three onset groups among a UK sample of 786 men convicted of murder. The early-onset group (20% of the sample) is more likely to have experienced significant problems in childhood and adulthood. The no-offending group (10% of the sample) is the least likely to have had problematic backgrounds. The childhoods of the late-onset group (67% of the sample) resemble the nooffending group (with few problems) but in adulthood they more closely resemble the early-onset group (with many problems).

Theoretical Perspective
Homicide followed by suicide is an extremely rare event, requiring an integrated theoretical understanding that goes beyond explaining it as either homicide or suicide. Police reports, newspaper articles, and interviews with families, friends, and neighbors connected with 42 homicidesuicide cases that occurred in greater metropolitan New Orleans between 1989 and 2001 form the empirical base of this study. A homicide followed by suicide typology predicated on thematic context, including victimperpetrator relationship, age, sex, race, ethnicity, and occupation in addition to precipitating factors, motivation, type of fatal injury, and location of event, is discussed. An integrated theoretical model using structural conflict intensity factors; elements of the social stressstrain perspective focusing on frustration failure and anomie power dominance issues is presented

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Durkheims Theory of Homicide and the Confusion of the Empirical Literature

Emile Durkheims theory of the relationship between societal development and homicide has received significant attention in the empirical literature of criminology, yet has been oversimplified by this literature and appears to be poorly understood. In view of what Durkheim explicitly states about societal development and homicide, it is apparent that his theory has not been carefully tested. Distortions of his work have resulted both from the fragmented nature of his theoretical presentation and, perhaps more importantly, from the

Literary Perspectives
Murder is horrifying; it is also compelling, in real life and in literature. In Cold Blood, Truman Capote's account of the destruction of the Clutter family by Perry Smith, contains this confession by the murderer we never used the lights again, except the flashlight. Dick carried the flashlight when we went to tape Mr. Clutter and the boy. Just before I taped him, Mr. Clutter asked me-and these were his last words-wanted to know how his wife was, if she was all right, and I said she was fine, she was ready to go to sleep, and I told him it wasn't long till morning, and how in the morning somebody would find them, and then all of it, me and Dick and all, would seem like something they had dreamed. I wasn't kidding him. I didn't want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat." Curiously, very few serious works involving murder are written from the point of view of the prosecutors. One excellent work that does offer such a vantage point is Helter-Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry. From Bugliosi's perspective, the criminals and victims are seen in relatively impersonal ways. He offers little sympathy for the victims-the Hollywood Beautiful People butchered beyond recognition in the Tate/Polanski household
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and the LaBiancas, a Clutter-like family in the suburbs. He is deeply interested in Charles Manson, the mastermind behind the murders, but his interests are guided primarily by the challenge of matching his wits with a formidable adversary. Bugliosi does not intend to arouse sympathies for Manson, although, again, Manson's life is amazingly similar to Perry Smith's; he was the product of a broken home, had a sexually indiscriminate mother and an unknown father, experienced reform schools and prisons as substitutes for home, and was preoccupied with bizarre personal dreams that ranged from his becoming a successful musician to his becoming a world dictator. Manson's life, like Smith's, can be seen as a search for the family and home he had never really had. Unlike Capote, however, Bugliosi does not intend Manson to be seen as society's victim; rather, normal society becomes Manson's victim as he gathers about him a collection of young men and women whom he labelsin a perverse twisting of our normal associations with the word-the Family. Manson teaches his Family to have no moral restrictions, but instead to indulge in all of society's taboos. By striking a direct counterpoint to usual social norms, Manson educates his Family to be freed from society's bonds; he teaches them to feel no guilt about any of their thoughts and actions. Ironically, of course, without a sense of guilt they become the most heinous creatures of all, losing any humanity and compassion either for themselves or for their victims.

Psychological Perspective
Some time perusing an archive of homicide cases and you are likely to find that certain conflict typologies, characteristic of particular victim-killer relationship categories are common. Barroom interactions among unrelated men became heated contests concerning dominance, deference, and face, and escalated to lethality. Women seeking to exercise autonomy were slain by proprietary Ex-partners. Thieves killed victims they feared might cause them trouble later. Children were fatally assaulted by angry caretakers.How are we to
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understand why certain recurring types of conflicts of interest engender passions that are sometimes so intense as to motivate these prototypical sorts of homicides.

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Child Homicide
Evolutionary thinking led to the discovery of the most important risk factor for child homicide-the presence of a stepparent (Daly & Wilson, 1996). Parental efforts and investments are valuable resources, and selection favors those parental psyches that allocate effort effectively to promote fitness. The adaptive problems that challenge parental decision making include both the accurate identification of one's offspring and the allocation of one's resources among them with sensitivity to their needs and abilities to convert parental investment into fitness increments. Mistakes in identification can 65 obviously incur a huge natural selective penalty, and countless animals have been found to be sensitive to species-appropriate cues that help parents avoid squandering resources on nonrelatives. Nevertheless, parents can be deceived, especially because selection is also acting on those unrelated usurpers to evolve means of bypassing parental defenses, as is dramatically illustrated by cuckoos and other brood parasites that lay eggs (which often mimic those of their hosts) in the nests of other species. More puzzling than such deception are instances in which adults that have access to reliable cues of nonparenthood take on parental duties nonetheless. In the animal kingdom, this happens mainly after forming a new mateship with a mate that already has dependent young. In many species, such young are likely to be killed, but in species in which the single parent has some leverage, the replacement mate may assume the role of stepparent, with varying degrees of effort and enthusiasm. The human animal is clearly such a species: Human stepparents invest considerable effort and may even come to love their wards. But it would be surprising if the psychology of genetic renthood were fully engaged, with full commitment, in this situation. It is adaptive and normal for genetic parents to accept nontrivial risks to their own lives in caring for their young, but selection is likely to have favored much lower thresholds of tolerable cost in stepparenting. Stepchildren were seldom or never so valuable
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to one's expected fitness as one's own offspring would be, and those parental psyches that were easily parasitized by just any appealing youngster must always have incurred a selective disadvantage. It is little wonder, then, that the exploitation and mistreatment of step-children are thematic staples of folktales all around the world (Thompson, 1955). And little wonder, too, that stepparental obligation demonstrably enters into remarriage decisions as a cost, not a benefit, with dependent children from past unions both detracting from the single parent's marriage market value and raising. The chance that the remarriage will fail (White & Booth, 1985). In light of these considerations, one might suppose that child abuse researchers hardly needed an evolutionary perspective to wonder about the factual basis of Cinderella stories. Are parents really more likely to neglect, assault, exploit, and otherwise mistreat their stepchildren than their genetic children, and if so, just how important a risk factor is this? Surprisingly, however, in the explosion of child abuse research that followed the proclamation of a battered-child syndrome in 1962, this seemingly obvious question was not raised. The first published study addressing it was Wilson, Daly, and Weghorst's (1980) demonstration that stepchildren constituted an enormously higher proportion of child abuse victims in the United States than their numbers in the population-at large would warrant. Subsequent research by many workers has shown that this excess risk is cross nationally and cross-culturally ubiquitous and is most extreme with respect to the most severe outcomes, namely, child homicide (Daly & Wilson, 1996). Homicides perpetrated by stepfathers differ from those by genetic fathers not just in their incidence but in qualitative attributes, too. In both Canada and Great Britain, for example, a substantial proportion of children killed by genetic fathers, but virtually none of those killed by stepfathers (Daly & Wilson, 1994), are slain in the context of a suicide, and the distraught father may even construe the homicide as a "rescue" (Wilson, Daly, & Daniele, 1995). By contrast, step parental cases are especially likely to involve a violent, assaultive rage reaction; whereas most small children killed by stepfathers are beaten to death, genetic fathers are relatively likely to have disposed of the child by gunshot or asphyxiation (Daly & Wilson, 1994).

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These contrasts support the evolutionary psychological theorizing that led to their discovery. Infants are taxing. They wail and soil them- selves and can be hard to soothe. But the very commotions that can grate on the nerves of bystanders are likely to evoke only attentive concern from a committed parent. Potentially damaging, angry responses are inhibited by parental love, an evolved psychological adaptation that makes the efforts of child rearing tolerable and even delightful. Stepparents assuredly vary in their degrees of personalized affection for the children, as do genetic parents, but it is equally sure that the average stepparent loves the child less.

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Homicidal Crimes
Every legal system contains some form of prohibition or regulation of criminal homicide. Homicidal crimes in some criminal jurisdictions include: Murder/murder in English law 1) Felony murder 2) Capital murder Manslaughter/manslaughter in English law 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) Voluntary manslaughter Involuntary manslaughter Intoxication manslaughter Death by dangerous driving Reckless manslaughter

Criminal Homicide 1) Culpable homicide (in Scots law) 2) Negligent homicide 3) Criminally negligent homicide

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Main Kinds of homicide

Homicide, in law, is taking of human life. Homicide is the act of human killing regardless of whether it was legal, intentional or premeditated. A person commits homicide when, directly or indirectly, by any means, he causes the death of a human being. It is killing of a human being by the act, procurement, or omission of another, death occurring at any time. Not all homicides are a crime, particularly when there is a lack of criminal intent. Non-criminal homicides include killing in self-defense, a misadventure like a hunting accident or automobile wreck without a violation of law like reckless driving, or legal (government) execution. This is justifiable and excusable homicide. Homicides that are neither justifiable nor excusable are considered crimes; this is when a person has a deliberate intention to take away the life of a fellow creature. So the two main kinds of homicide are: Non culpable homicide Culpable homicide

Culpable Homicide
A person commits culpable homicide when he causes the death of a human being by means of an unlawful act, by criminal negligence, by threats or fear of violence or by deception, to do anything that causes his death; or by wilfully frightening that human being, in the case of a child or sick person. Culpable homicide includes: A. Murder B. Manslaughter C. Homicide by abuse

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A. Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing of one human being by another. Murder is generally distinguished from other forms of homicide by the elements of malice, aforethought, and the lack of justification. All jurisdictions, ancient and modern, consider it a most serious crime. Most jurisdictions impose a severe penalty for its commission. Sometimes murder is used to describe what a homicide is really. While the two terms are related, they are not synonymous. Relatively few homicides are murders in law. Also, police will often call their investigation into a murder a homicide investigation in order not to prejudice any findings of the investigation, possible charges that could be laid, or any conviction of an offender. However, the crime will normally be identified as a murder once there is sufficient evidence to indicate that a murder is the more likely crime than any other. In most jurisdictions murder entails intent (e.g. planning), lack of a lawful excuse (e.g. self defense or insanity) and malice aforethought (e.g. not just surgery gone wrong). A Murder is the unjust, immoral and/or illegal killing of another human being. It is widely considered to be one of the worst crimes imaginable, and perpetrators are usually subjected to either lengthy imprisonment or the death penalty in countries which allow capital punishment. Murder comes in four varieties: A killing that resulted from the intent to do serious bodily injury, Murder committed by an accomplice during the commission of, attempt of, or flight from certain felonies. A killing that resulted from a depraved heart or extreme recklessness, and Intentional murder,
Some states make a distinction between first and second degree murders. First degree murder is a homicide committed with deliberately premeditated malice, or with extreme and wanton malice. The conviction for first degree murder often carries a HM321 PROJECT REPORT

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sentence of life imprisonment; in some states it can be punished by execution. Second degree murder is a lesser crime, in which a homicide is committed with malice but without deliberation or premeditation.

Basic Elements of Murder:

In common law jurisdictions, murder has two elements or parts: 1. the act of killing a person 2. the state of mind of intentional, purposeful, malicious, premeditated, and/or wanton. While murder is often expressed as the unlawful killing of another human being with "malice aforethought", this element of malice may not be required in every jurisdiction (for example, see the French definition of murder below). The element of malice aforethought can be satisfied by an intentional killing, which is considered express malice. Malice can also be implied: deaths that occur by extreme recklessness or during certain serious crimes are considered to be express malice murders. Exclusions Unlawful killings without malice or intent are considered manslaughter. Justified or accidental killings are considered homicides. Depending on the circumstances, these may or may not be considered criminal offenses. 1) Suicide is not considered murder in most societies. Because the offender and the victim being one and the same preclude a fair trial of the offender, however, assisting a suicide may be considered murder in some circumstances. 2) Capital punishment ordered by a legitimate court of law as the result of a conviction in a criminal trial with due process for a serious crime.

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3) Killing of enemy combatants in accordance with lawful orders in war, although illicit killings within a war may constitute murder or homicidal war crimes. (see the Laws of war article)

Victim:
All jurisdictions require that the victim be a natural person; that is a human being that was still alive at the time of being murdered. Most jurisdictions legally distinguish killing a fetus or unborn child as a different crime, such as illegal abortion of a fetus or the unlawful killing of an unborn child. The distinction between a fetus and an unborn child in these jurisdictions is that a child could survive if it had been born, while a fetus could not.

Mitigating circumstances:
Some countries allow conditions that "affect the balance of the mind" to be regarded as mitigating circumstances. This means that a person may be found guilty of "manslaughter" on the basis of "diminished responsibility" rather than murder, if it can be proved that the killer was suffering from a condition that affected their judgment at the time. Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and medication side-effects are examples of conditions that may be taken into account when assessing responsibility. Insanity: Mental disorder may apply to a wide range of disorders including psychosis caused by schizophrenia and dementia, and excuse the person from the need to undergo the stress of a trial as to liability. In some jurisdictions, following the pre-trial hearing to determine the extent of the disorder, the defense of "not guilty by reason of insanity" may be used to get a not guilty verdict. This defense has two elements: 1. That the defendant had a serious mental illness, disease, or defect.

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2. That the defendant's mental condition, at the time of the killing, rendered the perpetrator unable to determine right from wrong, or that what he or she was doing was wrong.

Felony:
The felony murder rule is a legal doctrine current in some common law countries that broadens the crime of murder in two ways. First, when a victim dies accidentally or without specific intent in the course of an applicable felony, it increases what might have been manslaughter (or even a simple tort) to murder. Second, it makes any participant in such a felony criminally responsible for any deaths that occur during or in furtherance of that felony. While there is some debate about the original scope of the rule, modern interpretations typically require that the felony be an obviously dangerous one, or one committed in an obviously dangerous manner. For this reason, the felony murder rule is often justified as a means of deterring dangerous felonies. According to most commentators, the common law rule dates to the twelfth century and took its modern form in the eighteenth century because the rule requires no intent to kill or even to do bodily harm, it has been criticized as unjust accordingly, and it was abolished in the United Kingdom in 1957 by the Homicide Act of 1957. In some jurisdictions (such as Victoria, Australia), the common law felony-murder rule has been abolished but replaced by a similar statutory provision. In reality, not all felonious actions will apply in most jurisdictions. To "qualify" for the felony murder rule, the felony must present a foreseeable danger to life, and the link between the underlying felony and the death must not be too remote. If the receiver of a forged check has a fatal allergic reaction to the ink, most courts will not hold the forger guilty of murder. Furthermore, the merger doctrine excludes felonies that are presupposed by a murder charge. For example, nearly all murders involve some type of assault, but so do many cases of manslaughter. To count any death that occurred during the course of an assault as felony murder would obliterate a distinction carefully set by the

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legislature; however, merger may not apply when an assault against one person results in the death of another. To counter the common law style interpretations of what does and does not merge with murder (and thus what does not and does qualify for felony murder), many jurisdictions in the United States explicitly list what offenses qualify. The American Law Institute's Model Penal Code lists robbery, rape or forcible deviant sexual intercourse, arson, burglary, kidnapping, and felonious escape. Federal law specifies additional crimes, including terrorism and carjacking.

Assassination:
Assassination is the murder of an individual; usually a political or famous figure. An added distinction between assassination and other forms of killing is that an assassin usually has an ideological or political motivation, though many assassins (especially those who are not part of an organized movement) also show elements of insanity. Other motivations may be money (as in the case of a contract killing), revenge, or as a military operation. The euphemism targeted killing (also called extrajudicial execution) is also sometimes used for sanctioned assassinations of opponents, especially where undertaken by governments. 'Assassination' itself, along with terms such as 'terrorist' and 'freedom fighter', may in this context be considered a loaded term, as it implies an act where the proponents of such killings may consider them justified or even necessary.

B. Manslaughter:
The distinctions between manslaughter and murder, consists in the following: In the former, though the act which occasions the death be unlawful, or likely to be attended with bodily mischief, yet the malice, either express or

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implied, which is the very essence of murder, is presumed to be wanting in manslaughter. The unlawful killing of a human being without malice or premeditation, distinguished from murder, which requires malicious intent. It also differs from murder in this, that there can be no accessories before the fact, there having been no time for premeditation. Manslaughter is voluntary, when it happens upon a sudden heat; or involuntary, when it takes place in the commission of some unlawful act.

C. Homicide by Abuse:
1) Dependent adult means a person who, because of physical or mental disability, or because of extreme advanced age, is dependent upon another person to provide the basic necessities of life. A person is guilty of homicide by abuse if, under circumstances manifesting an extreme indifference to human life, the person causes the death of a child or person under sixteen years of age, a developmentally disabled person, or a dependent adult, and the person has previously engaged in a pattern or practice of assault or torture of said child, person under sixteen years of age, developmentally disabled person, or dependent person. 2) As used in this section, "dependent adult" means a person who, because of physical or mental disability, or because of extreme advanced age, is dependent upon another person to provide the basic necessities of life. 3) Homicide by abuse is a class A felony.

Non Culpable Homicide

Non culpable homicide is non criminal, .it is excusable and justifiable, for e.g. homicide is the result of an accident that occurred during a lawful act and that did not amount to criminal negligence . Justifiable homicides are intentional killings done in accordance with legal obligation or in circumstances where the law recognizes no wrong. They include the execution of criminals in some states, killings necessary to prevent a felony or to arrest a suspected felon and killings in self-defense. on culpable homicide includes
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Excusable homicide, Justifiable homicide.

Excusable Homicide:
Homicide is excusable when committed by accident or misfortune in doing any lawful act by lawful means, without criminal negligence, or without any unlawful intent.

Justifiable Homicide:
Homicide or the use of deadly force is justifiable in the following cases: When a public officer is acting in obedience to the judgment of a competent court. When necessarily used by a peace officer or person acting under the officer's command and in the officer's aid: To arrest or apprehend a person who the officer reasonably believes has committed, has attempted to commit, is committing, or is attempting to commit a felony.

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Types of Homicide on base of Person being killed

Many forms of homicide have their own term based on the person being killed. Infanticide - Killing of an infant Fratricide - Killing of one's brother; in a military context, killing of a friendly combatant Sororicide - Killing of one's sister Parricide - Killing of one's parents Patricide - Killing of one's father Matricide - Killing of one's mother Mariticide - Killing of one's spouse Uxoricide - Killing of one's wife Filicide - Killing of one's child Regicide - Killing of a monarch. Genocide - Killing of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group

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Causes of Homicide
Personality traits are defined as enduring patterns of perceiving, relating to and thinking about the world that are manifested in a wide range of social and personal contexts. Research shows that people who go on to commit violent acts generally display serious psychiatric maladjustment relatively early. There are substantial rates of mental disorder in people convicted of homicide. Most do not have severe mental illness features such as deficits in the capacity for empathy, absence of mature guilt for suffering caused to others, idiosyncratic violent fantasies and behavior, cruelty to animals, classmates or siblings, low tolerance for frustration, excessive anger and substance abuse are often in evidence long before the culminating violent act. Parental abuse, neglect or other trauma may occasionally figure in the picture. Each case is different and human behavior is complex, but in short, "gentle," "normal" people generally do not commit mass murder. Unemployment is also one of the main reasons of homicide. If we consider a situation in which the qualified young graduate remains unemployed for longer period after he completed his education. His family has lot of expectations from him and to satisfy their expectations, he can go up to any extent and cross any limit just in desire of small payment. At this stage, he is not in a position to make a correct decision between what is just and what is unjust, but he don't want to miss any of the opportunity that life is giving him and in this feeling only he accepts those offers which can change his life and can break their social and moral ethics and they are ready to commit crimes, they are ready to kill a person, they are ready to accept any offer that can prove to be a earning money source for them. This major unemployed segment of society is the main source for crime. No criminal is by birth a criminal but it is the circumstances which make him do it.

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High ambitions are also the one source for crime. A person who has high ambitions like if he wants to enjoy all the comforts of life or wants to achieve the high status in his life, he wanted to complete them at any cost and any unfair means to fulfill his wish. To make his wishes come true or to enjoy the luxuries of life he can come in the way of crime as this seems to be an easy mean to earn money for them and when they do crime for the first time then the 'advantages' of crime compel them to commit such acts again and again and ultimately a time comes when they can commit serious crimes like murder and manslaughter, and now if they want to come back they can't be their way back to path of justice and honesty. Technology Advancements are also one of the reasons for increasing of crime rates. This is because technology advancements and media have broadened the mind of people and they now can think better ways of committing crimes. Like most of the young person want to own and make use of highly sophisticated arms. And if they are not made available to them, they think for different ways and professional criminal's takes advantage of this. Technology advancements have now made the way of criminals much easier than before.

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Homicide Mortality Rates and Age Patterns of Suicide

In most nations, suicide rates tend to increase and homicide victimization rates tend to decrease with age, but the degree of increase and decrease varies over time and across nations. In particular, some nations more than others, show a worsening of youth lethal violence relative to older age groups. This age variation across nations and time in both forms of lethal violence may result from the sizes of youth and elderly age groups, and the disadvantages and advantages, respectively, that size brings.

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Conclusion
The extreme situation of this behavior such as killings, murders and homicides of various kinds is also seen in Pakistan. In order to decrease this increasing rate of killings, murders and homicides three major arenas should be involved: Intervention with potential perpetrators Prevention by organizations Prevention on the individual levels In the first arena, one must identify high risk individuals, perhaps even in individuals, perhaps even in childhood, long before they consider killing. Once identified, interventions change the individuals course, making violence less likely. Clinicians however do not always have access to high risk individuals early in their lives. Therefore, they also intervener when homicidal behaviors seem imminent, to interrupt the emotional digression that leads to homicide. A second prevention involves careful preparation by schools, hospitals and business in the development and implementation of violence prevention plans and policies. These policies identify potential perpetrators, escape plans and policies on threats and aggressive behaviors. Through these plans, potential victims know what to do if they are threatened, and a culture that lessens the likelihood of homicide is developed. Finally prevention involves things we can do as individual when a violent incident is threatened or is in progress, in order to protect ourselves.

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Causes of Murder and Homicide

References:

Violence, Perspectives on Murder and Aggression, Author IRWIN L. KUTASH Nesse, R. M. (1990), Evolutionary explanations of emotions. Human Nature, 1, (261-289) Chagnon, N. A. (1988). Life histories, blood revenge, and warfare in a tribal population. Science, 239, 958-992 The conceptual hole in psychological studies of social cognition and close relationships. In J. A. Simpson & D. Kenrick (Eds.), Evolutionary social psychology (pp. 265-296). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Internet Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-homicide.html www.answers.com/topic/murder http://www.benbest.com/lifeext/murder.html http://bpd.about.com/od/levelsofcare/g/Inpatient.htm?iam=momma_100_ SKD&terms=treatment+of+homicide

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