The Serial Killer - Part XLIII
In 1960 there were 8.000 murders every year in the USA. Thirty years later, in 1990, the number increased to 23.438. The average of solved murders in 1962 was around 93%, which means that 600 cases were not solved. Today that number has decresead to 68%, that is 7.000 murders not solved. The average of murders has increased 280% in 30 years, while the average of non solved murders is around 1200%. This is due in the majority of the cases to an increase in the so called "strange to strange murders" - crimes where the murderer and the victim do not know eachother. Of these, serial killers are responsible for an important slice.
More than 90% of violent crimes are commited by men between the ages of 15 and 24. During this stage of their lives, young men go through several transitions, they become independent, they rebel and they have little control of their emotions. This is also due to social changes - we tend to have become strangers to eachother. In the beginning of the century, most people lived and worked in family estates. Then the fields and the small american cities became unpopulated. Migration to big cities was followed by changes in the family structure. The father abandoned the farm and started working for someone else, his children lost their male model. We can no longer visit our father at his day job because it is very far away from home. The american family lost its anchor point and its traditions. Before, members of the same family lived close to eachother, they knew all the neighbours, sometimes in the course of entire generations. Today, every year 36 million americans change home, which represents around 10'% of the entire countrie's population. On average a family moves around 12 times before their children are 18.
As for the race issue, it is not really a race issue but a social class issue. Violent crimes, mainly homicides, predominate in the lower classes, where racial variety is more disseminated. Yet the organized serial killer is a very specific type of killer, who commits murder for entirely different reasons than those that motivate the average violent criminal.
About the sex issue, it is probable that women may increase the numbers of serial killers because they tend to have more mobile and transitive occupations, aswell as more power in the working place and in their private lives. Yet they will never get close to the violent potential men represent.
Although there are a few occupations that might seem more likely to be associated with serial killers, such as truck drivers, it is not their job that makes them killers, rather they choose a specific type of job that allows them to be mobile, to jink authorities and find suitable potencial high risk victims, such as prostitutes or hitchhickers.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário