Instrumental and expressive violence in Belgian homicide perpetrators

Abstract

The present study aimed to examine offender types in a sample of Belgian single-perpetrator/single-victim homicide cases. First, it was investigated if the distinction between instrumental and expressive aggression could be documented in crime scene and offender background characteristics. Second, the instrumental and expressive themes from the first analysis were examined in relation to the motives the perpetrators themselves provided for their offence. A sample of 97 solved homicide cases was analysed using the non-metric multidimensional scaling procedure Proxscal. The results revealed that 62% of the homicide crime scenes and 67% of the offender backgrounds could be classified as either expressive or instrumental. The self-reported motives did not correspond with the themes according to the Proxscal analysis. © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.