New evidence on risk factors of partner femicide
A study carried out by the University of Barcelona has analysed data from all cases of men who were convicted due murder or attempted murder to their partners in Barcelona between 2004 and 2009, and compared them to a group of men who were convicted for killing women with whom they had no relationship with. Results show there are risk factors in common which make the crime more likely to happen among both kinds of murders. According to the researchers, partner femicides are more similar to other killings than the event itself and are more common than partner violence, such as physical aggressions or psychological abuse. This study could have future implications in the design of prevention measures for women murders within the context of partner violence.
A study carried out by the University of Barcelona has analysed data from all cases of men who were convicted due murder or attempted murder to their partners in Barcelona between 2004 and 2009, and compared them to a group of men who were convicted for killing women with whom they had no relationship with. Results show there are risk factors in common which make the crime more likely to happen among both kinds of murders. According to the researchers, partner femicides are more similar to other killings than the event itself and are more common than partner violence, such as physical aggressions or psychological abuse. This study could have future implications in the design of prevention measures for women murders within the context of partner violence.
UB researcher Ismael Loinaz is the first author of the study, in which the following have taken part: Antonio Andrés Pueyo, professor of Psychology of the UB, and Isabel Marzabal, researcher from the National Distance Education University (UNED).
A new view to analyse partner femicides
In current criminology, it is understood that a crime is something that happens with a certain probability according to the present risk factors surrounding the event. In this context, the aim of the study was to explore whether the men who kill their partners show different risk factors compared to those who have killed a woman with whom they have no emotional relationship. “So far, partner femicides had been analysed as partner abuse, and were compared to cases were there was no murder, to see which common elements of the abuser could lead to a femicide. This study has widened the observation field when comparing partner murderers to other murderers who had no relationship with the victim”, says Antonio Andrés Pueyo.
The study compared twenty-one murders by partners to a group of twenty murders without any emotional link. All authors were carrying out a sentence during the study. The essential comparison source for the risk factors in both groups was obtained from RisCanvi, a risk evaluation tool used in Catalan prisons. This is one of the few studies that could access these kind of aggressors. “It was hard to find cases of prisoners who were carrying out sentences for women murder (partners and non-partners) that could be compared to each other, since these are not common crimes”, says the researcher.
The results of this comparison show that those risk factors that make the crime to be more likely to happen are common in both kinds of murders. Aspects such as antisocial behaviour, violent behaviour record, drug and alcohol abuse, impulsivity and emotional instability or the lack of stress management, were factors that appeared regardless of the murderer being in a relationship with the victim or not. According to the UB professor, “so far, these similarities between both kinds of killings were not proved with this clearness”.
Moreover, researchers found a few specific risk factors of each kind of crime. In particular, the record of childhood imbalance disorders, unemployment problems, crime social roles, severe mental disorder and major recklessness -as a personality trait- in the criminal, are risk factors that have a higher prevalence in men who killed adult women with whom they had no emotional link.
Differencing femicide from partner abuse
Results prove the obtained similarities in other countries, something which could bring a change in the design of strategies to prevent these crimes. “Femicide prevention has to be organized around the specific factors of this kind of crime instead of a simple generalization of a preventive fight against partner abuse. Although our results are new, differencing one category from the other -partner femicide from partner abuse- can help reduce femicides, which are chronically stable”, says the researcher.
Regarding potential consequences of this study on the rehab of the sentenced aggressors, the researcher concludes that “programs for partner aggressors should be complemented with these components that are used in the penal field to treat homicides”.
Article reference:
Loinaz, I.; Marzabal, I.; Andrés-Pueyo, A. “Risk factors of female intimate partner and non-intimate partner homicides”. The European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context, 2018. Doi: https://doi.org/10.5093/ejpalc2018a4