Beyond Conventional Approaches: Murder as Interaction

Most of the studies on murder have tried to explain the difference in death rates in different areas. Despite being valuable, these studies and produced theories are not able to answer the questions of, ‘who kills whom’ or ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘why,’ a murder occurs. Unlike more common ways that describe and interpret aspects of murder, the present study has applied qualitative method and has conducted 14 in-depth interviews with 12 men and 2 women that had committed murder, with the hope of obtaining comprehensive understanding of offenders.
Hence, personal understanding of offenders and the way that they make sense of their lives, as well as the identification of their motives, are the main objectives of this research. The results indicate that the majority of murders are caused by conflict between people in various situations.
The option of resorting to murder as a way to resolve the disagreements and conflicts between individuals, widely differs due to variables such as class, gender and age. The majority of murders have two main features: first, in most cases violence is regarded as an acceptable means of resolving conflicts, and second, the events are not arranged in a particular place and time.
In other words, crime develops through a course of events and cannot be considered to be pre-arranged.