Suicide is not simply a typology of violence. All forms of violence are interrelated, and preventative action should tackle the common antecedents to all. Understanding what these are, and how they differ between regions and cultures, is key to developing effective violence prevention strategies that extend beyond suicide. In this chapter we discuss the relationship between suicide and other forms of violence including analysis of data from the World Health Organization. We then consider factors influencing volume and direction of violence including gender, poverty, drug and alcohol misuse, adverse childhood experiences, war, and natural disasters. Before finally moving on to preventative action that considers all forms of violence under the same framework. Throughout the chapter real-world examples will be given for important concepts with particular reference to self-immolation in South Asia and the Eastern Mediterranean Region as it is the authors’ area of research expertise.

It was not implausibe for Spanish inquisitors and their wider staff to provoke scandal in their communities through moral, sexual, physical, and financial offenses. The same held true for Spanish Catholic clergy at large. This essay examines the varieties and possible sites of inquisitorial malfeasance, as well as the special legal privileges that constituted one of the main attractions of being employed in an inquisition tribunal. The essay also ponders in particular the crime and heresy of clerical solicitation of female penitents for sexual favors. Those clerical malefactors were sentenced in secret and punished via exile that took them out of their communities. They thus kept their identities and offenses a secret. At the same time, however the Spanish Inquisition offered a legal platform for female complainants to voice their grievances.

The term art and part in Scots law refers to a form of derivative liability. This doctrine extends criminal liability to individuals who may not have committed the actus reus and, in some cases, may not have had the mens rea. Our understanding of the legal developments associated with this doctrine is limited. This chapter therefore examines the historical evolution of the concept, tracing its roots through selected early sources of Scots and English law. It investigates the extent of legislative reform in the sixteenth century and evaluates, through selected homicide prosecutions from 1580 to 1650, the impact of these reforms on the administration of justice and the prosecution of art and part.

Medieval English law set the killing of a husband by his wife apart from most other homicides, because it was perceived as particularly serious and disruptive of the social order. Husband-killers were burned, not hanged, as a spectacular demonstration of condemnation and concern for this social problem. As this chapter shows, however, husband-killing also presented legal problems. There was a doctrinal puzzle in terms of the unclear extent to which this offence should be assimilated to treason, as opposed to homicide: the later distinction between ‘high treason’ against the king, crown or government, and ‘petty treason’ against a domestic superior did not come into being as neatly as sometimes assumed. There were also struggles on a procedural level, as attempts were made to fit husband-killing into common law modes of prosecution, prompting some creative strategies on the part of those seeking to secure a conviction.

This chapter examines five key issues concerning the definition of a ‘victim’ in homicide law. First, protection should extend to all living humans, regardless of individual characteristics, although future considerations may necessitate specialised norms for animals and AI. Secondly, grading or sentencing based on victim characteristics (age, gender, occupation) is unjustified. Thirdly, homicide law should apply only to born individuals, with cases involving foetuses injured by third parties potentially prosecuted under ‘foeticide’. Fourthly, homicide law should focus on killing ‘others’, not ‘self’. Suicide should not be criminalised, although assisting or inciting suicide may be prosecuted in certain circumstances. Fifthly, determining when a victim is ‘already dead’ and beyond homicide law’s scope should use criteria consistent with defining the beginning of life (irreversible cessation of brain stem function or circulatory and respiratory function). These points aim to clarify the scope and application of homicide law, addressing complex issues surrounding victim status, foetal rights, suicide and the definition of death in legal contexts.

The five punishable acts of genocide are listed in the paragraphs of article II: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. The list is an exhaustive one rather than an indicative one. The Secretariat draft of the Convention divided the acts into three categories, physical genocide, biological genocide and cultural genocide. Cultural genocide was rejected but one act from the category was retained, that of forcibly transferring children. A proposal to add a crime of driving people out of their ancestral homeland was rejected by the General Assembly. Sexual and gender-based violence is encompassed by the act of causing serious bodily or mental harm.

This chapter concerns an 1892 texbook on Egyptian criminal law by Muḥammad Ra’fat (d. ?), al-Durra al-Yatīma fi Arkān al-Jarīma. Exactly a decade before its publication, Egypt’s national (or native) legal system, as well as the political and moral philosophy underlying it, experienced important - both conspicuous and subtle - transformations whose character is much debated today. Ra’fat taught jurisprudence in the French section of the Khedival School of Law and his textbook was read by law students in late Ottoman (khedival) Egypt who were taught to understand the laws that govern their own society as commands of law (sing. qānūn) embodied in discrete articles of various applied legal codes. In this period, the Sharīʿa and the various rules of fiqh encompassed within the various Islamic schools of law (madhāhib) no longer explicitly governed Egypt’s criminal justice.

The death of a patient by suicide (or homicide) can have a considerable, and lasting, emotional impact on mental health professionals, most commonly manifested as guilt, blame, shock, anger, sadness, anxiety and grief. There are often notable impacts on professional practice, including self-doubt and being more cautious and defensive in the management of risk. This chapter explores suicide and unlawful killing in the context of inquests.

This chapter tests cycles of silence in Lagos to evaluate its applicability in a Global South context where, unlike Baltimore, the state and the police have limited resources. The chapter’s results come from an original survey of shopkeepers, paired with interviews and observation, in the city’s expansive markets, pockets in which “area boy” crews engage in violence and extortion. Consistent with the patterns found in Baltimore, area boy violence reduces cooperation by boosting perceived retaliation risk and making cooperation norms appear to be weaker than they are. Underlying cooperation support exists among shopkeepers, the chapter’s final section explains, in part, because the area boy crews have largely failed to gain legitimacy with Lagosians.

The Conclusion first summarizes the study’s findings. It then presents the study’s policy implications that might help inform local actors’ decisions on interventions related to police–citizen cooperation in communities with criminal groups. Additional research questions are also proposed. In particular, how the study’s findings might relate to contexts experiencing political violence such as civil war or insurgency remains an avenue for future research. The final section highlights that populations are projected to grow fastest in countries with strong criminal groups and weak state institutions for fighting those groups. This trend increases the urgency to understand vacuums of justice and how they might be filled.

This chapter tests cycles of silence theory in Baltimore to evaluate its applicability in a Global North context where the state and the police are well resourced. It provides background on how Baltimore residents become exposed to violence by drug crews and details the results from an original survey of residents in the city’s violence- affected communities. Violence heightens perceived retaliation risk, and the heightened risk perception in turn pushes residents who support cooperation to keep that support private. As result, residents share less information than they otherwise would in absence of this norm suppression. The chapter’s final section explains that the underlying cooperation support exists, because the drug crews have largely failed to gain legitimacy in eyes of residents.

This chapter explains the motivation for the study. A stark reality is that states often fail to provide justice in many communities enduring criminal group violence. Deaths from criminal group violence roughly equal deaths from war between states, intrastate conflict (namely, civil war and insurgency), and terrorism combined. Moreover, criminal group affiliates who engage in the violence do so with near impunity in many communities. Criminal groups’ ability to escape accountability means that these communities face what I term vacuums of justice. The chapter goes on to argue that justice provision is a core responsibility of the state and, by failing in this regard, states shirk one of their raisons d’être (reasons for existence) under the social contract. The chapter’s final section explains the link between justice provision and cooperation with the police, positing that the police’s reliance on information from witnesses often makes cooperation a necessary albeit insufficient linchpin for justice provision.

The Introduction previews cycles of silence theory, which seeks to explain how criminal groups constrain citizen cooperation with the police. The Introduction focuses on laying out the book’s central contributions. Theoretically, the book provides a new explanation for how criminal groups prevent cooperation with the police, highlighting the role of their violence in suppressing perceived norms favoring cooperation. The theory speaks to the political science literatures on state-building, political conflict, and criminal governance as well as literatures from other social science disciplines including criminology. Methodologically, the study bridges research divides between the Global North and Global South by testing the theory in both regions. The study also employs realistic survey experiments including a virtual reality–based survey experiment. Finally, the Introduction puts the study into perspective: While the book’s focus may be centered around the effect of violence, the violence should not be interpreted as a defining feature of communities that endure criminal groups.