NCJ Number
102186
Journal
Medicine Science and the Law Volume: 26 Issue: 3 Dated: (July 1986) Pages: 193-198
Date Published
1986
Length
6 pages
Annotation
Analysis of case records of 106 persons charged with murder in Northern Ireland and sent to the authors for psychiatric assessment between 1974 and 1984 found political murderers generally to be more stable than nonpolitical killers.
Abstract
A 140-item questionnaire that collected demographic, offense, psychiatric, and dispositional information was completed for the sample's 98 males and 8 females. Within the group, 47 had killed for political or terrorist reasons and 59 for nonpolitical reasons. The subjects had a mean age of 32 years, only 30 percent were married, and their educational attainment generally was poor. The analysis revealed that significantly more nonpolitical murderers were under the influence of alcohol at the time the crime was committed and that more of them had a family history of personality disorder. Political murders tended to be scattered throughout the weekdays, while two-thirds of the nonpolitical killings were on weekends. In contrast with nonpolitical murderers, political killers rarely killed females, often killed more than one person at a time, and seldom knew their victims. Tables and 18 references.