Friends of the Forensic Science Club, this week we present the paper “Expressiveness and instrumentality of Crime Scene Behavior in Spanish Homicides” by Pecino-Latorre, M. M.; Pérez-Fuentes, M. C.; Patró-Hernández, R. M. and Santos-Hermoso, J. (2019), in which authors study whether the instrumental/expressive model is useful to establish different homicide typologies, based on their characteristics.
We have already seen in this club that homicide investigation is one of the most complex fields that police must face.
That is why criminal profiling becomes so interesting and needed nowadays, because it develops tools in order to assist criminal investigations forming hypotheses regarding the potential characteristics of a crime’s perpetrator and increasing the efficiency of police investigations.
Within all the tools that criminal profiling possesses, authors decide to focus, in this paper, on the instrumental/expressive model of investigation.
This model was developed as an attempt to overcome problems and limitations of prior systems. It was designed in order to create a classification system to help explain violent behavior, describing the interpersonal dynamics existing between victim and perpetrator, and to help to thematically differentiate between actions carried out by aggressors during homicides.
On the one hand, instrumental aggression is motivated by the desire to obtain some type of benefit, for instance, economic or sexual. The aggressor’s objective wouldn’t be causing physical harm to the victim, but violence may be used whenever it is needed to achieve the desired results.
These aggressions are related to homicides carried out during another criminal activities, such as robbery or sexual assault.
On the other hand, expressive aggression takes place in response to some sort of threat that is perceived by the aggressor. It is related to an intense emotional activation, anger and hostility, often as a result from an escalation of violence. The perpetrator’s purpose would be causing physical harm to the victim, but no necessarily the death.
If this aggression results in homicide, they tend to take place between individuals who know one another.
Numerous studies have demonstrated the utility and effectiveness of this model for establishing a homicide typology and for linking these typologies with aggressor’s potential characteristics.
Knowing this model, authors wonder if it is really useful to differentiate thematically between homicides.
In order to that, they carry out a study in which the sample consists of 448 Spanish homicides committed between 2010 and 2012. Variables were selected in accordance with prior studies that had used the instrumental/expressive model (for instance, homicide characteristics, modus operandi or victim’s characteristics). With a statistic software, all data was processed.
Obtained results showed that, as it was thought, the instrumental/expressive model is useful to establish a typology for homicides. Specifically, for homicides selected in this study, five types of homicides appeared.
The first type would be expressive-impulsive homicides. This is one of the most predominant characteristics of the 448 homicides of the sample. These homicides are characterized by a lack of planning and premeditation, and the violent act would have its origin in an emotional impulse. The victim’s body tends to be found on the site of the act, revealing a lack of intent by the perpetrator to hide or destroy the evidence. Besides, victims would be known by the perpetrator, making it likely that these homicides are caused by an argument.
The second typology is expressive-distancing homicides. In these homicides it’s important the presence of postmortem actions related to the hiding and displacement of the victim’s body from the original crime scene. These acts reflect the perpetrator’s intent to distance him/herself from the crime scene, and to disassociate him/herself from the criminal act.
Expressive-family homicides, would be those carried out in the family setting, mainly in the form of filicides, in which females tend to be the perpetrators, and minors tend to be the victims. This kind of homicides would happen because of a perpetrator’s try of satisfying his/her emotional needs. Moreover, suffocation is the main method used to carry out the homicide.
The fourth typology is instrumental-opportunist homicide. In these homicides, the violent act carried out by the aggressor is precipitated, based on an ulterior motive, like sensation of power or control. The victims tend to be strangers and are perceived as objects for which the aggressor has no sort of feeling. They are opportune victims, having a certain vulnerability to being victimized. Plus, the aggressor would be characterized by a forensic knowledge, not leaving physical evidence or biological remains at the crime scene.
Last ones are instrumental-gratification homicides. The victims are perceived as a way to achieving the aggressor’s main objective, which is to obtain sexual or economic gratification. It is possible that there will be no evidence, since the perpetrator may have removed all incriminating evidence. These homicides can take place during other criminal activities, mainly robberies, where the death may be caused by an attempt to obstruct the aggressor from obtaining his/her economic benefit.
The results obtained are consistent with prior works that showed that the characteristics of the homicides and the behavior of the aggressors on the crime scene may be differentiated thematically in terms of instrumentality and expressivity, explaining violent behavior and the interpersonal dynamics between victim and aggressor.
These results have practical implications within the framework of criminal profiling as a complementary tool for assisting police investigations, especially to establish a more rigorous suspect prioritization while also helping to reduce the time and economic resources.
There are some limitations in this study. First, the typologies are not clearly defined and can overlap with another. This may be due to the fact that the results were obtained from information that did not include detailed references on the homicide scene, location of injuries, circumstances in which the body was found, and other variables related. That is why authors refer that future research should include these factors in order to obtain better results.
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