Comments on The General Blog of Crime: A Heavy Heart

Patch,I appreciate your comments. I am drafting a...

2007-11-26T19:31:00.000-05:00

Patch,

I appreciate your comments. I am drafting a post to respond to some of the points you raised. (I'm doing a post instead of comments so that I can include links.) Look for it soon!

I agree with both of you. There are sensless acts...

2007-11-26T14:45:00.000-05:00

I agree with both of you. There are sensless acts of violence every day here in the STL, and they get little to no media coverage. No one mentions the structural disadvantage of the city nor the children that witnessed the violence or were left behind.

I do think it is important that we continue to recognise the multi-faceted nature of victimization. To move beyond the larger homicide rate and to look at the consequences of crime for families, children, and the community.

Thanks for putting the list together. I am sure they will be more soon - unfortunately.

I'm not sure this is a gender thing. I mean, ther...

2007-11-26T12:46:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure this is a gender thing. I mean, there are plenty of examples of women engaging in unconscionable violence against the family – Andrea Yates, Susan Smith, that doctor from Illinois (I can’t remember her name). The interesting thing is that many of these and other women who murder their children are found NGRI. It must be insanity, we reason, for a woman to kill her children. I can’t think of a single case where a man who killed his kids was found NGRI. To be sure, this is a bit of a separate issue, because ABP is talking about IPV – not killing of kids. But I’m sure there are plenty of examples of women killing their partners (anyone know the data on this?). When a man kills a women in any context it is not a good thing – but it is especially vituperative* when it is done in the company of the child. My point is that we have cases where women act in violent ways that don’t make sense to us, just like these men have done. It doesn’t make sense for a father to kill the mother of his children in front of the children. It just doesn’t. If we could figure out the cause or how to prevent it – now that would be something to be thankful for…

PS – Every time I see Drew Peterson on the Today Show I just cringe. He just looks like an arrogant bastard.

*Thanks to Pap for this word