FOR PROF MAURICE ONLY --- Assignment 2: RA: Criminal Behavior in Your Community

Running head: IDENTIFYING AND GATHERING RELEVANT DATA 0

Identifying and Gathering Relevant Data

Sherry L. Crowe

Dr. Robert Meyer

Psychology of Criminal Behavior

FP6015

May 24, 2017

Homicide is the killing of human beings by another person. Murder and manslaughter are both forms of execution. The death inflicted by a person taking another person’s life regardless of the intention of the action is a criminal offence. Homicide is a crime according to United States Laws, as is many other states globally. Justified self-defense is not categorized as a crime. Similarly, there are other forms of murder including euthanasia, killing during war, and capital punishment of a person (Smith, 2013).

Homicide can be categorized into criminal and non-criminal. Criminal homicide is like murder or manslaughter; this is when there is killing by intention and without any danger being imposed on the murderer (Reid, 2016).

Non-criminal includes capital punishment of a convicted person and euthanasia in respective jurisdictions. This involves the arms of government who are mandated to protect the nation, and in that event, they can kill to eliminate the public threat. Actions like terrorism and international security threat can fall under excused homicide in the aim of protecting the people and reducing the risk. Insanity poses another accepted justification of killing, and induced killing in aid of self-defense and the others security is among the noncriminal homicide (Eriksson, 2013).

Many aspects contribute and accelerate the rate of homicide, the poverty of people and poor social status can lead to people into stress and committing crimes that are either criminal or non-criminal (Riedel, 2015). The socio-economic situation of people influences the rate of homicide in the society. The less privileged individuals in the community are the most affected in the sense that they undergo a lot of mental and physical stress in satisfying their needs and livelihood.

The most affected group in the society is the youth; youth more often are perpetrators of the crime. Extreme lifestyle cases and peer pressure has played a key role in the determination of the criminal activities that are experienced in the society today. Societal achievement and different opportunities available in the lifestyle arena engages the young people’s minds in a negative way to an extent they make the un-informed decision due to rushing to find solutions. According to the FBI, the rate of crime in the US increased by 3.9 percent in 2015 an increase from the previous year. The criminal cases have escalated because of the rate at which societal influence has impacted on the people with the rise of technology and lifestyle change (Cramer, 2016).

Social and human rights education must be addressed to the public, and thus the relevant government must ensure that they engage the appropriate authorities in the exercising of the human rights and thereby reduction of crime in the society (Matejkowski, 2014). Consequently, the criminal gangs must be eliminated from the society to reduce the criminality in the community. There should be a well-defined curriculum in schools on behavior change to mentor good citizens in the society who respect law and order. Community policing and real collaboration with the law enforcers is also another aspect that must be enhanced to eliminate vice in the society.

Transparency and fairness must be employed when solving the criminal cases. This will ensure that only the legal liable persons are convicted of the crimes that they committed and not innocent people. The courts must be fair and transparent to the extent of the truth and impose the penalty to be taken by the convicts.

In San Diego County, there was a “total of 5,409 Part 1 violent crimes which include homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Between January and June of 2016 there was an average of 30 per day and about one more per day than the first half of 2015 (Burke, 2015).”

In the state of California, the homicide reported in 2015 was 1,861 which was an increase of 164 from 2014. That is a twenty-five point one decrease from the 2,483 reports in 2006 (Harris, 2015).

References

Burke, C., Ph.D. (2016). Crime in the San Diego Region Mid-Year 2016 Statistics. Criminal Justice Research Division, SANDAG, 3-18. Retrieved May 31, 2017, from http://www.delmar.ca.us/DocumentCenter/View/2490

Cramer, C. E. (2016). Why the FBI's Justifiable Homicide Statistics Are a Misleading Measure of Defensive Gun Use. U. Fla. JL & Pub. Pol'y, 27, 505.

Eriksson, L., & Mazerolle, P. (2013). A general strain theory of intimate partner homicide. Aggression and violent behavior, 18(5), 462-470.

Harris, K. D. (2015). California Homicide Statistics for 2015. Retrieved May 31, 2017, from https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/cjsc/publications/homicide/hm15/hm15.pdf?

Matejkowski, J., Fairfax-Columbo, J., Cullen, S. W., Marcus, S. C., & Solomon, P. L. (2014). Exploring the potential of stricter gun restrictions for people with serious mental illness to reduce homicide in the United States. The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology, 25(3), 362-369.

Reid, S. (2016). Compulsive criminal homicide: A new nosology for serial murder. Aggression and Violent Behavior.

Riedel, M., & Welsh, W. N. (2015). Criminal violence: Patterns, causes, and prevention. OUP Us.

Smith, E. L., & Cooper, A. (2013). Homicide in the US known to law enforcement, 2011. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.