The homicide circumplex: a new conceptual model and empirical examination
| Date | 05 November 2018 |
| Published date | 05 November 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JCP-03-2018-0015 |
| Pages | 314-332 |
| Author | Matt DeLisi,Alan Drury,Michael Elbert |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Criminology & forensic psychology,Criminal psychology,Sociology,Sociology of crime & law,Deviant behaviour,Public policy & environmental management,Policing,Criminal justice |
The homicide circumplex: a new conceptual
model and empirical examination
Matt DeLisi, Alan Drury and Michael Elbert
Abstract
Purpose –Homicide is the most severe form of crime and one that imposes the greatest societal costs.
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the homicide circumplex, a set of traits, behaviors,
psychological and psychiatric features that are associated with greater homicidal ideation, homicidal
social cognitive biases, homicide offending and victimization, and psychopathology that is facilitative
of homicide.
Design/methodology/approach –Using the data from a near population of federal supervised release
offenders from the Midwestern USA, ANOVA, multinomial logistic, Poisson and negative binomial regression
models were developed.
Findings –Greater homicidal ideation is associated with homicide offending, attempted homicide offending
and attempted homicide victimization and predicted by gang activity, alias usage, antisocial personality
disorder and intermittent explosive disorder. These behavioral disorders, more extensive criminal careers,
African American status and gang activity also exhibited significant associations with dimensions of the
homicide circumplex.
Originality/value –Developing behavioral profiles of offenders that exhibit homicidal ideation and behaviors
are critical for identifying clients at greatest risk for lethal violence. The homicide circumplex is an innovation
toward the goal that requires additional empirical validation.
Keywords Offending, Homicide, Criminal psychology, Homicide circumplex, Murder, Psychological profile
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Homicide is the apex of criminal offending, the only form of antisocial behavior that produces
the death of the victim, and the form of crime that imposes the greatest societal costs
(DeLisi et al., 2010; Hartley et al., 2005; Wickramasekera et al., 2015). Although the homicide
literature is protean, several broad statements can be made about individuals that attempt or
complete homicidal acts. First, homicidal conduct is strongly correlated with a versatile,
generalized involvement in antisocial acts, such that a murder can be seen as a byproduct of
other risky, dangerous behaviors including street gang involvement, security threat group
involvement, violent offending, drug selling and weapons offending (Adams and Pizarro, 2014;
Cale et al., 2010; Cunningham et al., 2010; Decker and Pyrooz, 2010; DeLisi and Scherer,
2006; Farrington et al., 2012; Pizarro et al., 2011). To illustrate, Cook et al. (2005) performed a
case-control study of a data set that contained all arrests and felony convictions in Illinois for
1990–2001. Overall, 884 persons were convicted of homicide and were compared to
7.9 m controls. Nearly 43 percent of the homicide offenders had at least one prior felony
conviction whereas only 3.9 percent of controls had a felony conviction. In terms of arrest,
nearly 72 percent of murderers had been arrested compared to 18.2 percent of controls.
In terms of violent felony convictions, such as homicide, rape, armed robbery, aggravated
assault and related crimes of violence, 9.3 percent of homicide offenders had prior convictions
compared to 0.9 percent of controls. In short, homicide is often representative of a broader
antisocial behavioral pattern.
Received 29 March 2018
Revised 14 June 2018
Accepted 14 June 2018
Matt DeLisi is based at Iowa
State University, Ames,
Iowa, USA.
Alan Drury is based at United
States Probation Southern
District of Iowa, Des Moines,
Iowa, USA.
Michael Elbert is Chief US
Probation Officer at the United
States Probation Southern
District of Iowa, Des Moines,
Iowa, USA.
PAGE314
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VOL. 8 NO. 4 2018, pp. 314-332, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2009-3829 DOI 10.1108/JCP-03-2018-0015
Second, homicide offenders often evince considerable psychopathology and personality
disturbances relative to persons in the general population and even other serious offenders
(Chan and Beauregard,2016; Culhane et al., 2016;Lysell et al., 2014). In this way, persons who kill
or are killed by others (e.g. by law enforcement, by other offenders or by potential victims
that use defensive violence) experience states and traits that exponentially increase opportunities
for involvement in lethal violence. Several forms of psychopathology including psychosis
(Large et al., 2009; Nielssen andLarge, 2008), disordered mood (Minero et al.,2017),depression
(Flynn et al., 2016)and specific diagnostic conditionsincluding Bipolar disorders( Fazelet al.,2010)
and Schizophrenia( Fazelet al., 2009) have been shown to significantly increase circumstancesby
which an individual is at risk for homicide perpetration, victimization or both.
Third and relatedly, homicide offenders also commonly exhibit a variety of social risk factors
relating to various adverse childhood experiences, victimizations, poverty, mortality and gang
activity (DeLisi et al., 2016; Farrington et al., 2012, 2018; Loeber et al., 2005; Pyrooz, 2012;
Trulson et al., 2012, 2016; Vaughn et al., 2009) that increases their liability to homicide exposure.
For example, in the Northwestern Juvenile Project, antisocial youth had significantly elevated
mortality relative to persons in the general population. Among delinquent males, homicide was
the cause of death in 91 percent of cases with the remaining sources of mortality relating to
suicide, drug overdose, motor vehicle accident and other medical conditions (Teplin et al., 2014).
Based on data from 5,908 homicide offenders selected from the Florida Department of Juvenile
Justice, Baglivio and Wolff (2017a) found that nearly two-thirds of homicidal youth had antisocial
peer associations, 37 percent had history of witnessing serious violence, nearly 35 percent had a
household member with incarceration history and nearly 12 percent had family violence history.
In multivariate models, household mental illness increased the likelihood of homicide offending
more than tenfold, greater dispositional anger more than doubled the risk of homicide offending,
and history of self-mutilation increased the likelihood of homicide by a factor of 18.5!
Thus, homicide can be understood as a downstream outcome of a behavioral history that is
saturated with overlapping risk factors.
The current study introduces the homicide circumplex, which is defined as the set of behaviors,
traits and psychological and psychiatric features that are associated with contemplation,
attempts and completion of homicide, and homicide victimization. Across multiple dimensions,
there is important variance relating to: the degree with which an individual contemplates
homicide; the degree with which an individual’s social cognitive style invokes homicide as a
potential behavioral option; the degree that an individual is exposed to homicide offending and
victimization usually due to their immersion in criminal activity; and the degree with which an
individual’s psychological and psychiatric traits and behaviors are associated with homicide.
Evidence for these statements is provided below.
The homicide circumplex
Homicidal contemplation/ideation
There is sporadicbut nevertheless meaningfulevidence on the salience of homicidal ideation tothe
perpetration of serious criminal violence including murder. In Anderson’s (2000) influential code of
the streettheory, criminal offenderslive in a state of homicidal hypervigilance wherelethal violence is
a subcultural adaptation to environmental threats from other street code-adhering offenders. In
urban centers characterized by concentrated disadvantage, there is a “kill-or-be-killed”ethos that
results in exponentially higher homicide offending andvictimization among African American males
(Blumsteinet al., 2000; Braga, 2003; Fox andZawitz, 1999; Hutson et al., 1995)–the demographic
group in theUSA with the greatest risk forhomicide involvement. Unfortunately, despitethe visibility
of Anderson’s work, criminologists have not generally focused on homicidal ideation in studies of
serious offenders. However, in their study based on the data from federal supervised release
clients,DeLisi, Elbert, Caropreso,Tahja et al. (2017) and DeLisi, Tahja,Drury, Caropreso, Elbertand
Heinrichs (2017) recently found that offenders with greater homicidal ideation had more extensive
criminal careers including arrests for an assortment of violent crimes (e.g. murder, attempted
murder, kidnaping, armed robbery and aggravated assault), were more likely to be chronic
or career offenders, and had more severe and expansive psychiatric history. In this regard,
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