Evaluation of selective strategies for the prevention of criminal homicide in China.

Abstract

The legal theory of crime causation postulates three main strategies for crime control: (a) increasing inhibitory factors (those which might prevent actualization of criminal behaviour). Here the death penalty plays a part. (b) reducing facilitating factors (decreasing the availability of the prerequisites for the offence). Gun control legislation may be employed to this end, since it decreases the availability of lethal weapons. (c) controlling predisposing factors. If these are known, medical intervention is supposed, in some points of view, to be able to rectify them. Prevention of criminal homicide, like the prevention of most crime, takes two forms: first, the offender may be prevented from repeating an act; second: the non-offender may be prevented from ever committing his first criminal act. Two different types of strategies may be adopted: specific deterrence, directed at the offender after the act, and general deterrence, directed at potential offenders before acts are perpetrated. The death penalty operates as specific deterrence. The principle of general deterrence rests on the assumption that all persons are similar, and that threat of the death penalty will affect all members of a society equally. Gun control legislation is a strategy of reducing facilitating factors, directed at the general population and designed to prevent the commission of the act. Here, again, is the assumption that all persons are similar and that non-availability of prerequisite weapons will prevent the homicide. Medical interventions have been utilized, for offenders as well as for potential offenders. In both cases, however, a diagnosis of the anomaly must be first made. In the case of potential offenders, such a strategy requires investigating entire populations, an unrealistic and unfeasible project. The intent of this study is to determine which of these strategies would be most suitable for the control of homicide in China. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)