Criminal and Income Trajectories Preceding Severe Violence

• In Event: Situational and Offender Characteristics as Precursors to Violent Outcomes

Abstract

Lethal offenders usually come from the lowest social strata and have an extensive criminal history. But do the years preceding homicide differ from the trajectories of offenders of less serious violence? We explore this question by drawing on a large dataset combining data from various administrative registers with a nationally representative sample of different types of police-reported violence committed in Finland 2010–2011. We analyze the criminal and income trajectories of offenders convicted of five different types of violence: minor assault, assault, aggravated assault, attempted homicide, and completed homicide. We use matching by age and sex of the offenders for taking account the different demographic structure between the offender groups, and deploy the group-based trajectory modeling for analyzing the different trajectories preceding the index crime. There is a lack of research on pathways to lethal violence in general, and comparisons to other types of violence are rare. This paper therefore examines the question whether the years preceding homicide are characterized by a spiral of increasing crime and socioeconomic disadvantage, and contrasts such pathways to other types of violence.

Author

• Karoliina Suonpää, University of Helsinki