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Sociology 4

September 20th, 2007 by admin

 BREAKING NEWS! - STEVE SARKISIAN NAMED UW FOOTBALL COACH!  Steve Sarkisian has been the offensive coordinator for the USC Trojans for the last two seasons and has been fairly successful there.  We will see how Steve Sarkisian can perform as University of Washington’s new head football coach.

Myth 9 – You Should Never Have Sex on the First Date

Truths:

  • Sometimes, the moment is perfect – it can even begin a commitment/relationship
  • Sometimes you only get one chance – nothing ventured, nothing gained
  • Always show off your best qualities
  • Some men will never open up unless it’s sexual
  • Sex early on can lead to quicker self-disclosure and intimacy (i.e. the girl and guy who met at the airport, started touching on the plane, had sex at the hotel, and are now serious)

But there can be:

  • The person who treats you like disposable tissue
  • The person who starts planning the wedding the next morning
  • Pregnancy or STDs. Oops.
  • You don’t want your children doing this

So…always be true to yourself. Weigh risks and benefits…and go from there.

Myth 20 – Everyone should cohabitate before marriage:

  • You can’t really know someone if you don’t live with her
  • When you live together, you will get enough info about your lover’s habits and personality, so that you can better your chances for relationship success
  • Cohabitation is good for couples because it avoids the older, patriarchal rules for marriage. It is a much fairer, more egalitarian relationship (no- married men do more child care, more housework, and are more fair about money)
  • But cohabitation is sexier- couples don’t take each other for granted
  • We can marry when we are ready for children (but that may never come!!!)

Tips if you do cohabit:

  • Don’t cohabit for over a year
  • Mirror marriage as much as possible

Myth 10 – Even if sex isn’t fantastic in the beginning, it can be fixed

  • There are a lot more important things – bad sex is just trivial
  • Practice makes perfect, and there’s always sex therapy (practice doesn’t always make perfect, and sex therapists can help but cannot create miracles)
  • Sex isn’t that important – especially as you get older
  • Once my partner is relaxed with me, she will be wilder and our repertoire will inc.

What to do, then, if the sex isn’t good:

  • Don’t get married or get help before committing
  • Stop faking sexual responses
  • Experiment

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Sociology 3a

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Myth 3 – You Know When You Will Have Met the One

  • False positives – I think he is but he isn’t
  • False negatives – I think he isn’t but he really is
  • I think he’s the one so I don’t take in contradictory information
  • I think he’s the one SO BADLY that when the relationship dies, I go crazy
  • I don’t look at alternative explanations for my feelings of anxiety/romance (i.e. the football player who’s heart started racing when there was bad turbulence and he interpreted that as love for the stewardess whom he later married and divorced)
  • I am addicted to the romance that is so highly prevalent in our culture
  • I think that if he’s the “one,” he’s always going to be the one
  • The American Government is pulling accounting fraud.

Myth 4 – Pick Only Someone You Are Madly in Love With

  • Love is enough to see you through
  • Life hasn’t really been lived if you haven’t loved with all your heart and soul (this means different things to different people, and what about the trade-off and sacrifice to love with “all your heart and soul?”)

Truths about being MADLY in love:

  • You produce hormones that make you act not in your best interest
  • You are picking a long-term partner on short-term emotions
  • Do you really want to be the person who loves most? You will have the lower hand~ your partner will feel more secure and relies on you loving him so much that he won’t do much to try and keep you
  • Give the relationship time so that the madness passes and you can more accurately judge J
  • Why not have your own model of love besides mad passion?

Myth 7 – Pick Someone Who Has Sown His or Her Wild Oats and is Now Ready to Settle Down with You

Truths about unfaithful people:

  • Studies have shown that unfaithfulness correlates with amount of premarital sex
  • There is no physiological craving for sex with a new person – it’s just a learned behavior with a hormonal thrill for conquering someone new
  • There may be a hormone-theory of sexual types (i.e. women with more testosterone on average may have a big effect)

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Sociology 2

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Orgasm

  • female: changes are mostly in the upper 1/3 of the vagina, strong contractions with .8 second intervals reoccurring 3-15 times per orgasm, uterus elevates and also contracts, clitoris shortens in half
  • male: ejaculations with rhythmic contractions, most ejaculate all semen
  • both: heartbeat and respiration peak

Resolution

  • all changes return to normal
  • How to attract women and girls

  • accomplishment #2: M/J started the whole field of sex therapy: for orgasmic impairment, premature ejaculation, simultaneous orgasm, dyspeurenia (pain with intercourse), vulvadynia (exterior pain with intercourse), inhibited desire
  • accomplishment #3: Wrote Methodological Advances for Observation of Sexual Function
  • accomplishment #4: Founded a new vision for female sexuality: in the clitoral vs. vaginal orgasm debate, there was no way to tell what was stimulated; all orgasms involve the clitoris (very little nerve endings in the vagina); the more indirect stimulation, the slower the orgasm response; women are multi-orgasmic
  • accomplishment #5: homosexuality (??)

M/J elicited many criticisms:

    1. mechanistic – mostly masturbators were studied
    2. the first phase was excitement, but what gets you there? they explained arousal, but not desire; Helen Singer Kaplan was the first to explore desire
    3. internal states and sociological facts, such as socialization or traumatic sexual events, were simply not included
    4. model wasn’t listed as a “normal” sample- you had to have a history or masturbation, be somewhat exhibitionistic, and be orgasmic
    5. the studies assumed males and females are sexually the same in most ways
    6. participants were chosen for their ability to talk about it
    7. they ignored class differences
    8. volunteers went through training
    9. the study was goal-oriented (orgasm)
    10. they presumed sex is always a disappointment if orgasm doesn’t happen
    11. largest criticism: M/J created the “medicalization of sexuality”

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Sociology 1

September 20th, 2007 by admin

William Master and Virgina Johnson

Physician and Assistant (and Lover)

  • First studies done in 1954; research lab was created in the 1960s at Washington University at St. Louis
  • Laboratories studied human sexuality- the first subjects to be recruited were recruited for their promiscuity…i.e. prostitutes
  • set up plethysmograph (don’t need to know that) to measure blood congestion
  • had women masturbate with a dildo equipped with a camera
  • after a while, they recruited were “normal” but had to be successful at masturbation (i.e. reached orgasm)
  • looked at 10000 episodes
  • some diseases may never be cured
  • wrote the Human Sexual Response Cycle (accomplishment #1): excitement, plateau, orgasm, resolution

Excitement

  • general body arousal: heart rate, blood pressure and breathing increases, “sex flush” is present, sweating of the mucus membrane, vasocongestion

Plateau

  • additional body changes or intensification of those changes in the excitement phase
  • women: distention and lengthening of the vaginal wall, outer 1/3 of the wall becomes engorged, more vaginal tightness, creation of a smoothness in the muscle, clitoris flattens and hides beneath the clitoral hood
  • men: blood flows into the penis, penis doubles in size, muscle tension increases greatly, possible tightening and lifting of the scrotum

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Murder Class 17a

September 20th, 2007 by admin
  1. what we can learn about sex scandals?
  2. voila the story of betty and donald – they have lots of sexual problems that even start with their kissing- she feels his tongue is being rammed down her throat, donald was just trying to force his way into her affection; they represented a universal reality that sex does not merely make up a part of a relationship, but embodies the depth and quality of their emotional connection; they needed to understand that what they did in bed was an expression of themselves; they used sex to confirm the negative beliefs they had set for themselvers and were looking for self-growth in the context of marriage; at the yucky parts of marriage, one can either try to control the other (donald), accommodate even more (betty), withdraw physicall or emotionally (betty), or learn to soothe their own emo problems; they needed to slow down to realize what they were consciously doing to each other; they had been suggested eyes-open sex, they continuted on and their sex life was entirely better
  3. I have no idea what this is about

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Murder Class 16

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Exam 2 Study Guide

  1. Prostitutes: bottom rung are “street walkers-” they are the most likely to be raped/robbed assaulted, they work 5 days/week, mostly do fellatio (intercourse is less than ¼ of the time); middle class is made of brothel workers (i.e. Mustang Ranch)- think of Nevada…they have legal prostitution…also think of massage parlors that hide their real agendas! The upper echelon of prostitution includes “call girls,” “chorus girls,” and “keps”- they are normally educated and beautiful and can earn 100-250 or 500-2500 dollars a night…they often work through contracts/services or referrals…they are often on contract by the month with payment in tuition or gifts…this leads to a much more long-term economic relationship

MALES: they are young and often have street culture; known as “chickens” or “pimps” and are chased by “chicken hawks” (straight men); within the gay culture, they work clubs and bars which provide an anonymous environment for married men (bathrooms and cars)…study of license plates with men in the bathroom?; there are also places like Bugis street in Singapore- market in the daytime, transsexual nuttiness at night

  1. Well… Kinsey noted that 69% of all males had been to a prostitute, but in 1994, 17% of males and 2% of females had been to one; within males, half are occasional customers, half are repeaters; 40% are married, and 90% of those said that their wives had no idea; in Atlanta, the average age was 35 and 54% were white, 40% were black
  2. sexual addiction has such characteristics as sexual risk taking, obsessional quality with prostitues and pornography, excessive masturbation; Carnes (1983) defined it was 1) secret, 2) abusive to self or others, and 3) used to avoid pain; it’s almost NEVER about emotional connections; one can be preoccupied (sex all the time), compulsive (beyond control), ritualized (patterns), or in despair (feeling the guilt)
  3. EFFECTS: pragmatism vs. ?, self interest over values, sexuality of powerful men, compulsive sexuality, sexuality and sexual aggressiveness of young women, sexual harassment is much more murky, adultery in American families, kidding each other about what is or is not unfaithful or non-monogamous, an appetite to be voyeurs ourselves

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Murder Class 15

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Gender of Seuxuality Theories

· Essentialists: desire is biological and evolutionary; cause of desire is genetically programmed reproductive functions specific to males and females; consequences are male independence in reproduction and female-centered child-rearing practice and passivity are the cause, rather than the result, of gendered social institutions

· Social Constructionists: desire is sociological and contextual; causes of desire are social institutions and social interaction signal and sanction “male” and “female”- gendered norms of behavior; consequences are support for or opposition to sex/gender-segregated reproductive and social practices depends on social definitions of men, women, and sexuality

· Integrative: desire is contextual and physical; causes of desire are bodies, environments, relationships, families, governments shaping sexuality; consequences are policies address some biological differences such as pregnancy and work, and emphasize the impact of social forces, interaction, and societal programs

Gender of Sexuality Vocabulary

· Whatever…I’m too tired to care.

Theories of Choice, Network, and Scripts and Norms

· Scripting theories assume that patterns of sexual conduct in a culture are sexually derived, that human beings possess no biological instincts about how to act sexually, that through a process of acculturation lasting from birth to death, individuals acquire patterns of sexual conduct that are appropriate to their culture, and people may not enact the scripts provided by their culture exactly but instead my make minor adaptations to suit their own needs

· Choice Theory: concerned with how people utilize the resources available to them in the pursuit of one or more specific goals: choosing partners on the long-term based on overall value, skill, scarcity, likeness in aspirations à private choices

· Network Theories: based on dyads; assumes that partnerships may conform to certain regularities that have been observed regarding social relationships more generally, that the features of the relationship itself will be important in determining what activities will occur, and that sexual dyads do no exist in a vacuum but are instead embedded within larger networks of social relationships

Study the sexual response cycle!

 

Evil Preacher’s fraud exposed?

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Murder Class 14

September 20th, 2007 by admin

History Of Sexuality – Patterns

· From social control to individual sexual choice

· From a focus on reproduction to a focus on intimacy and pleasure

· From sexual archetypes to sexual diversity

· From religious to secular

· Now using sexuality for political gain

· Shifts in culture, technology, and ecology

Reactions to:

· Growth of cities

· Outbreak of utopian sexual communities during the early to late 19th century (Shakers, Oneidans, Mormons)

· The new mass media and availability of contraception and abortion info

· Birth of the public health movement

· Shakers: get red of sexuality and its tragedies and heartbreak- have crazy dancing instead

· Oneidans: wanted the pleasure of sex without consequences (pregnancy, romance)

· Mormons: specific attack on monogamy; but gave up polygamy for statehood

· Merry Mount: blatantly free community founded by Thomas Morton- free love, free sex

· Puritans: see New England/Plymouth

Public Health Movement/Mass Media/Contraception Boom and Legality

· Anthony Comstock (1880s-1920s) – known for Comstock Laws in 1929 that presocuted thousands for circulating birth control information; there were also obscenity laws for even talking about sex

· Margaret Sanger – created the Planned Parenthood movement, but she was part of the “contagion” group and eugenics movement- lots of immigrants were coming and she didn’t believe we needed their genes to be mixed in the woodpile

· In the South: Jim Crow laws, Miscegenation Laws (laws against people of mixed races producing offspring), Mann Act (against traveling over state lines for immoral purposes); there was a fear of racial/ethnic sexuality

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Murder Class 13

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Masters and Johnson

· Started in 1954 followed by a lab created at WUSL in 1960s

· Lab studies on human sexuality

· First recruited the promiscuous and prostitutes

· Had women masturbate with a dildo equipped with a camera- required some degree of exhibitionism

· Then recruited for people who were “normal” but had to succeed at masturbation

· Looked at 10000+ episodes

· Clinically documented multiple orgasms in women and the source of lubrication; also showed that orgasmic contraction does not suck up sperm into the uterus

· Also argued “phallic fallacy”- the clitoris and penis are not analagous

· Accomplishments: 1) wrote human sexual response cycle, 2) started the whole field of sex therapy, 3) wrote Methodological Advance for Observation of Sexual Functions, 4) created a new vision for female sexuality (ie reject Freud’s mature vs immature orgasm), and 5) data on homosexuality

· Criticisms: mechanistic (mostly masturbators), 1st phase is masturbation, but what gets you there? it explains arousal but not desire…desire to later be explored by Helen Singer Kaplan, internal states or sociological facts were simply not included, the model wasn’t listed as a normal sample (ie you had to reach orgasm, have a history of masturbation, etc), the study assumed males and females are alike sexually, p’s were chosen for their ability to talk about it, they ignored class difference, the study was goal-oriented, sex was presumed a disappointment if there was no orgasm, “MEDICALIZATION OF SEXUALITY”

Early U.S. History

· PROTESTANTS: like Confucianism, it was all about the family; in the 1600s, emigrants were worried about displeasing God by leaving the old world and wanted to create Godly communities; if one sinned, it brought down the whole group…Puritans; sex ratio brought about higher fertility rates and channeled sex into marriage. The TV1 is an important document

· In Plymouth, they liked sex, but only for reproduction; adultery wasn’t true if it was with a single woman, you could drivorce a prude or an impotent person; the whole family lived in one-room houses with one bed; women were believed to have to have an orgasm for conception; contraception was highly disapproved of- abstinence, coitus interruptus, lactation

· 18th c. New England: sex was for marriage and reproduction; there was courtship/bundling with a bundling board

· 19th c. New England: growth of cities, sex was being looked at more as “good”- not just for reproduction but for happiness; female sexual purity (?), more attempts at limiting the family, technological advances in contraception (esp. in the 1840s), mass media on contraception and abortion

· Late 1800s New England: up come the moral entrepreneurs: Constock, Mormons

· Chesapeake/South: not so much emphasis on the family because you didn’t need to succeed in business based on a family (New England had a religious, utopian nature about it); people who moved there had more vaired origins; men far outnumbered women compared to New England and therefore Chesapeake women could be tempted by many other men; sodomy laws were less extensive than in New England; indentured female servants were present and could not marry- therefore were offered sexual advances; huge illegitimacy rates

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Murder Class 12

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Kraft-Ebbling

· First modern researcher on sexuality

· Sexuality is a disease

· Model of sadism and masochism- women are submissive

· Started conversation on importance of fantasy and behavior

· TREATED homosexuality- instead of punishing

· Aware of female sexuality and exploitation of women

· Introduced study of fetishism

Havlock Ellis

· MD in Victorian England

· Wrote Psychology of Sex in 1896

Freud

· Developed id (innate wants and desires), ego (surface of personality- what we show, how we act), superego (conscience, right and wrong…deep)

· Said sex drive was important as the drive, say, for eating

· DRIVE creates appetite and need; sociologists say that culture creates drive

· Libido, erogenous zones

· Theories of childhood sexuality (first year – oral, second year – anal, third to fifth year – phallic, sixth – latency, repression)

· Brought up castration fears, Oedipus complex, Electra complex

· Had some theories on female sexuality…like what do women want anyways? He also believed in mature vs. immature orgasms

Kinsey

· Father of modern empirical research on human sexuality

· Taxonomist and biologist…first worked on the gall wasp

· Created the Kinsey scale – coded on outlets to orgasm, it was a scale from 0à6 in which 0 was completely heterosexual, 6 was completely homosexual; it was based on fantasy, behavior, who you love, and intensity of attraction and desire

· Findings on female sexuality: females more sexual than believed, half not virgins when married, multiple orgasms are possible

· Findings on homosexuality: 37% of men came with another man, 4% gay their whole life

· Criticisms: oversampled students, educated, prisoners, protestants while undersampling rural populations, the uneducated, Jews and Catholics, etc; interviewed a pedophile without reporting him, the prison data was upsetting, and his data was mechanical- and behavior-driven without the context of a relationship

· Scholars are a community and therefore can possess obscene materials

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Murder Class 11

September 20th, 2007 by admin

The timeline and personal characteristics of the victim also suggest information about the murder. The investigation would hopefully and quickly rule out the family of the victim; the parents were on vacation and the friend of the victim did not report seeing the victim’s brother during the evening of the victim’s death. The fact that her purse was never found combined with the details connecting the murder to the drug scene may indicate a drug transaction gone sour. On the other hand, the murder may have occurred after the victim rejected the killer’s romantic advances at the club. The chafing and Band-Aids on the back of the heels of the victim suggests that the victim habitually wore uncomfortable shoes. Unlikely to be part of her attire for cashiering, she may have worn them while often frequenting clubs (or other place of nightlife), and the perpetrator may thus have previously seen her at such a locale. The sheets, also found in the green trash bag containing missing body parts, may indicate that the murder was either committed in a bed, or inside a residence/hotel, where sheets were readily available for the initial wrapping the body. This also suggests that the murder was not committed in or around the club, but rather that the victim and killer may have had initial contact there and voluntarily left with him (gender is presumed) upon closing.

The investigation should be focused on the number of the men who were present at the club on the evening of the victim’s death. Generalizing to this population, it is likely that the killer is young (aged 18-25) and single. Because he may spend a lot of time at clubs and may dabble in the drug scene, he may be well-groomed and sociable, but unemployed. Prior offenses may include drug trafficking arrests or assault (against other noncompliant women or anyone else who has offended him). It was reported that the doorman asked her for a dance and that she agreed for later in the evening; he and anyone else who was known to come in direct contact with the female may be a possible person of interest.

Zosia Stanley is a friend of Fletcher’s.

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Murder Class 10

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Jeremy Jurva has met Zosia Stanley.

The details of the crime scenes suggest a number of possibilities about circumstances surrounding the murder. The location of the body, on the lookout-ledge approximately 15 miles from the city, suggests that the body was thrown and that the murder may have been committed in the city nearby (the 15-mile distance may be the intersection of optimal distance and feasibility for the killer). There also seemed to be a number of clues that indicate the killer’s intelligent attempt at deidentification: removal of the clothing (should anyone be able to tie clothing to the victim), decapitation (should anyone be able to recognize her face or examine dental records), and removal of the fingers (so that she could not be fingerprinted). The blouse and bra, tied around the victim’s forearms, may have served as the immediate means for transporting the victim; the nylon cord was likely added later for efficiency in binding and transportation. This suggests that there may have been only one perpetrator who had difficulty transporting the body, and that the body may have been taken to more than one location. The bag containing the skull, fingers, flesh, hair, clothes, and sheets suggests that the killer was intelligent and thorough enough to remove those items belonging to the victim/crime scene that are pertinent to identification of the victim.

The cause of death, though unknown upon discovery of the body, is most likely blunt force to the head (as evident by fractures to the skull). The wound on the neck, which was noted as contribution to the victim’s death, may have been caused after the blunt force to insure death of the victim. The small incisions may indicate the killer used in ineffective device to try and sever the body parts, after death, before eventually using the hack-saw like blade (whose marks are shown on the hands).

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Murder Class 9

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Dead woman scene:

  • Shoes and tread of cops – not the killer!
  • No blood or evidence of assault…until bullet hole…far away
  • 3:330-6 AM: same contact/assault/murder/recovery site
  • She never took her hands out of her pockets
  • Young women in apt said woman got in an argument with the man late at night and she left (last seen)
  • Gun stored on top of shed
  • No one ever knew who she was L

Deterrence/Capital Punishment

  • Specific deterrence: absolutely, finally deterred (execution)
  • General deterrence: negatives outweigh positives; FEAR the consequences
  • “the state executed him” – naïve – it’s killing on our behalf
  • Are you for or against? Retribution, emotion, public safety
  • Death penalty is not a deterrent
  • Weis used to be against, but now he’s for
  • Huge conceptual/analytical leap to say that executions in TX/FLA deter people in WA to commit murder; you have to see it happen and it has to be an offense that was committed in your community – it should also be done SOON
  • Execution may not deter/suppress, but rather produce more murder (brutalization)
  • Surveyed criminologists – most said no deterrent impact, but 2/3 said no brutalization either – it’s always a moral decision

Gun Control

  • Would we have less murder if we had fewer guns?
  • The gun is often the means by which the person is dead
  • We’re saturated with guns compared to the rest of the world – we also have a high number of handguns designed to hurt people
  • Lethality of guns; knife requires contact; knives and clubs require more effort and are difficult

Murder Case to Profile – Details

See notes

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Murder Class 8

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Time and Distance as Solvability Factors

Major components of a murder (shared by virtually every one)

  • Body recovery site: police come across it first, usually
  • Murder site: where the death of the victim occurred
  • Initial assault site
  • Initial contact site: where do the killer and victim first initially meet (that leads to murder)
  • Victim last-seen site

Case Status: UCR

  • Solved: cleared by arrest, exceptional clearance (Capitol Hill murders), open but arrest warrant issued
  • Unsolved: open, inactive (inactive for a long time = “cold”)

When there is no separation of sites…

  • Accounts for ~2/3 of murder cases (65%)
  • Maybe crime of passion or heat of the moment
  • Solvability of this = 73%

When the sites are separated…

  • Completely separated = harder to solve
  • But, when sites are separated in the time and distance, but all sites are known, solvability rate = 98%!!!
  • 38% of the cases, evidence connected to the killer found within 3 miles of the crime scene
  • Solvability rate for all cases: 73%
  • Body Recovery site: 73%
  • Murder site: 80% (more witnesses – killer and victim more likely to be found together)
  • Initial Assault Site: 86% (think Bundy – if someone had seen him hit Georgann Hawkins)
  • Initial Contact Site: 88%
  • Victim Last-Seen Site: 73% (killer not likely to be there)
  • Site separation natural cutoff @ 200 ft.
  • When people pick up and carry bodies, they can only usually do so for 150-200 ft.
  • Solvability increases and time and distances decrease among pairs of location
  • When victim-last-seen site and body recovery site are separated by 1 month and 1.5 miles, solvability is 4% (characterizes a lot of serial/predatory killers)

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Murder Class 7

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Profiling

  • Misperception that FBI is involved early on – PR machine, media attention
  • Can be a useful tool among many others
  • John Douglas of FBI sometimes gets credit for it, but he did not invent it
  • FBI rarely investigates homicides because they are usually violations of state laws
  • Early 1970s – Behavioral Sciences Unit of FBI
    - Molaney did first profile on kidnapping of Stacey Yeuger
    - Teton and his group of fellow agents aided in the conception as well
  • Also has been called applied criminology, psychological profiling, crime scene analysis, criminal profiling, criminal personality profiling, criminal investigative analysis, crime scene assessment, etc.

Crime Scene Assessment

· Locating physical evidence

· Determining solvability factors

· Signature and MO analysis

· Interviewing procedures

· Offender profiling (looking for clues from the crime scene, looking for clues from victimology (what is the victim like???))

Offender Profiling

Profile characteristics of the unknown offender:

Sex

Age

Race

Marital status

Intelligence

Education, scholastic achievement

Lifestyle

Family, socialization environment

Social adjustment

Number of offenders

Personality

Demeanor

Appearance and grooming

Emotional adjustment

Evidence of mental problems

Employment history

Work habits

Residence proximity to the crime

SES

Relationship to victims

Signature

MO

Sexual adjustment

Organized/disorganized crime scene

Prior criminal history

Apparent motive

Likelihood of insertion into investigation

Phases of Murder (antecedent behavior, murder act, body disposal, post-offense behavior)

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Murder Class 6

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Two examples in reading…

  • Across 300 SMSAs – not individuals
  • Economic inequality is not related to homicide
  • Absolute poverty is related INVERSELY to homicide (abs poverty = % within the SMSA)
  • Methodological explanations? SMSA is too big and masking important limitations? Or… types of murder not distinguished from each other (domestic vs. stranger) – you lose information when you don’t disaggregate… or… psychological leveling effect (behavior is sort of the standard) – so not as much frustrated desire

Example 2

  • Across 125 cities; included 5000 black residents
  • Racial residential segregation is related to black homicide rates; greater the racial dissimilarity, higher homicide rates in blacks
  • Residence-based segregation leads to breakdowns in formal/informal social control; it’s cyclical – feeds on itself; cities in 1970s losing population – the people who moved were the ppl who could afford to; “white fight” – city becomes “poorer” – concentration of people at the lower end of class structure

CONFLICT

  • Social contact (opportunity) is critical à bring victims and offenders together
  • Central social dynamic element of causation
  • Variation by type of murder
  • In great majority of murders, victims and offenders know each other – 85%
  • Generally, evidence of prior serious physical violence between victim and offender (55% in WA)
  • Draw upon motivation to rationalize their crimes à really angry at the person
  • Criminal behavior is an indicator of conflict within the person – it’s intra-personal, whether real or imagined
  • Murder is resolved conflict.
  • 3 types of intra-personal conflict among stranger killers:
    1) psychotic killers – struggling with demons
    2) serial killers – murders of strangers may be manifestations of conflicts with others earlier in life
    3) people who let real or imagined conflict build up and fester until it becomes an obsession (e.g. Columbine)
  • Resolutions to conflict:
    1) stalemate
    2) both parties are happy = communication/compromise
    3) winner and loser
    (individual characteristics play a role)
  • Routine activities
    - lifestyle
    - community you live in
    - daily activities
    - may seek out and create the opportunity
    - different social situations have different levels of volatility

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Murder Class 5

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Great University District bars and clubs in Seattle!

CULTURAL/SUBCULTURAL and SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL

  • based on Wolfgang
  • criminologist are substantially sociologists
  • Patterns of Criminal Homicide: Wolfgang, 1958: focused on the individual meaning; had access to individual level case files
  • Most of the theory on murder is based one aggregate-level data
  • Criticism – “culturally deterministic” – ignores individual-level difference within cultures or that the majority of people within a culture are conformers
  • “Homicide is a situated transaction.”
  • VP-murders: Wolfgang – ¼ of all murders in Philadelphia are victim-precipitated; definition – victim is a direct, positive precipitator; the FIRST to use physical force, show use of a deadly weapon, commence interplay, show violence; what social event accompanies this? Answer: situated transactions (?)

SOCIAL STRUCTURAL

  • Cultural theories aren’t quite as promising.
  • Early sociology looked at social structure and a number of other things.
  • UCRs provide readily available data…as well as Census data (aggregate level)
  • Lots of research on social structure (particularly class structure
  • Inequality and crime à “common sense” notion
  • “Absolute poverty”: higher rates of crime among the poor
  • Why would poverty produce crime? You’re desperate and there’s a need/despair; hopelessness/survival; this idea has been shown to be TOO SIMPLE
  • “Dangerous Classes” – poor, living in decrepit areas, crime, violence, murder…AKA called “underclass” today
  • Countries with higher poverty vs. countries with lower poverty? Highest crime rates NOT found in the former!
  • Instead, look at “relative poverty” – difference between the haves and the have-nots produces frustrated desire and thus more motivation to commit crimes (Blau)
  • Today, top 1% of U.S. owns 40% of the wealth!
  • Size of gap between rich and poor affects general health
  • Seattle: middle ranking in inequality, middle in health

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Murder Class 4

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Why do people kill each other?

  • Motives: reasons to account for/explain individual’s behavior
  • Typos of person: higher probabilities, label carries with it the explanation, behavior is a symptom of the label, we have trained people to categorize
  • Social context: thanks to empirical research and the way we see the world, these factors are implicated
  • Individual characteristics: characteristics of individuals that we know, empirically, are correlated with higher rates of murder
  • Catalysts: facilitators (in video)
  • Social processes: these variables are affected by the other five… e.g. where does anger come from? Answer: other people!
  • What percentage of murders is committed by males (group question)? 90% or so – but why? Sociological question.
  • Why did HE do it? Or… among those males who kill and among those who don’t kill – what’s the difference? Individual level question.

Dominant Theoretical Metaphor (diff explanation of yesterdays)

The killer is…

  • Mad (crazy): sick (biologically, psychological pathology), irrational, not responsible (or legally less responsible)… this was a dominant way of thinking through the mid 20th c. despite the fact that the most severely disturbed disorders account for 2-5% of all murders
  • Bad (immoral): “The Asshole” paper; evil, rational, and responsible

THEORIES OF MURDER

BIOLOGICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL/PSYCHIATRIC

· People are predisposed (more likely to commit a murder – but why?)

· No twin studies where both were serial killers

· Brain scans: causal order is backward; we should ask – are there more traumas in the general population or in the serial killer population?

· “fantasies”? bullshit. You can fantasize about real things…

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Murder Class 3

September 20th, 2007 by admin

SOCIAL PROCESSES

Rivalry

Competition

Social relationship

Conflict/dispute

TYPES OF PEOPLE

Diminished self-control

Psychotic

Depression

Suicidal

Emo disturbance

Sociopath

Multiple personalities

Schizophrenia

CONTEXT

Environment

Proximity

Place

Social situation

Social context

CATALYST

Drugs

Altered states of consciousness

Alcohol

Weapons

INDIVIDUAL/SOCIO-DEMOGRAPHIC

Gender

Age

Unemployment

Priors

SES/poverty

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Murder Class 2

September 20th, 2007 by admin

Killer’s Post-Offensive Behavior

  • Left town 21 %
  • Confided in someone 18%
  • Followed case in media 17%
  • Contact victim’s family 11%
  • Revisited crime scene 11%
  • Interjected himself 10%

- a lot of this post offensive behavior is really just a continuation of the murder for the killer

- killer returns to the disposal site in 22% of the cases: prior to discovery/removal of body, 81%, within three days of the incident, 56%

- the police had contact with the killer about some aspect of the case before he became the prime suspect in 34% of the cases

- time for killer’s name to come up: immediately – 30%, less than 24 hours – 51%, less than 75 days – 74% (25% no name at all)

Theories of Murder

  • Guesses based on some knowledge – allows us to make predictions
  • There are lots of theories of crime, but not murder
  • Theories of crime may not adequate explain murder; different beh and diff meaning

Class Suggestions

MOTIVES

Financial gain

Revenge

Heat of anger

Silencing a witness

Rid 3rd member of love triangle

Jealousy

Love

Altruistic killing

Control

Domination

Hate

Thrill

Sex

Drug distribution

Terrorism/assassination

Domestic

Child abuse/adult abuse

For attention

Felony murder

Ritual

Fear

Boredom

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