Neil Websdale

With highly detailed and riveting case studies, Websdale explores the pivotal roles of shame, rage, fear, anxiety, and depression in the lives and crimes of individuals who kill their families. His analysis demonstrates how internal emotional conflict, against a backdrop of societal pressures, is at the root of familicide, challenging the widely accepted argument that murderers kill family members to assert power and control.

The Emotional Styles of 211 Killers

Familicidal Hearts

Dr Jeff Ferrell

In Making Trouble, leading scholars in criminology, sociology, criminal justice, womens studies, and social history explore the mediated cultural dynamics that govern image construction and understanding of a wide range of contemporary controversies (for instance, drug dealing, freight train graffi ti, anti-abortion violence, etc.). Edited within unifying central themes such as "situated media"; the evolution of policing and social control; and the gendered construction of crime, deviance, and control, Making Trouble marks a signifi cant expansion within this field.

Cultural Constructions of Crime, Deviance, and Control

Making Trouble

This book explores dementia-related aggression, violence, and homicide through a detailed analysis of “gray mist killings.” The term gray mist killing refers to intimate partner homicides (IPHs) committed by spouses/partners suffering from dementia, homicides of dementia sufferers committed by their caregiving spouses/partners or other family members, and IPHs attributable to the complications of caring for a co-resident family member suffering from dementia. Killings by people with dementia raise questions about the role of biological, psychological, and sociological forces. This book therefore encourages discussions around the relative weighting of these interrelated forces, and why the criminal justice system and the courts have a hard time handling these killings. It also adds to our understanding of the social responses to people with dementia, the orchestration of services, the nature of caring, and the interaction between sufferers and those familial, community, and state actors that provide support and care. The vividly detailed case studies (from the US, UK and Australia) uniquely inform criminological debates about violence, homicide, and the social responses to these complex phenomena. They are organized around the apparent motives for the killing, such as mercy, theft, prior intimate partner violence, mental illness, and exhaustion. The social responses of families, communities, and state actors are examined and contextualized against what researchers and dementia specialists suggest are promising or best practices for intervention. Apparent triggers or circumstantial precipitants for the killings invite discussion of signals, risks, and preventive interventions. The book culminates in an attempt to make sense of gray mist killings, as well as a discussion of broader implications and significance in relation to globalization, violence against women, the rising prevalence of the dementias, declining birthrates, climate change, and sustainable economic development. Drawing from a variety of disciplines, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, psychology, psychiatry, anthropology, gender studies, social work, law, public policy, and gerontology. It should also appeal to judges, prosecutors, lawyers, social workers, gerontologists, law enforcement, adult protective services, physicians, psychologists, and psychiatrists. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Gray Mist Killings

Fatal Family Violence and the Dementias

This groundbreaking examination of murder among intimate partners considers domestic homicides in all their guises -- not just those occurring between sexual partners but the killing of children, parents, and siblings as well. Unlike previous studies of domestic killings, which focus on statistical findings, the work illuminates the complex factors that motivate intimate partner murders. Drawing on extensive documentary sources and field research, Neil Websdale unearths the case histories of some 300 homicides involving family members and frames them within their interpersonal, familial, cultural, situational, and cultural contexts. He explores the kinship systems of various cultural groups (African American, Latino, Caucasian, and Asian American), discusses types of social and gender oppression, and explores the nature of families that experience domestic homicide. He also examines how these murders are covered by the media and looks at social policy initiatives designed to reduce such incidents. By exploring the cultural patterns and the intricate workings of power struggles revealed by these cases, Understanding Domestic Homicide expands one's understanding of such disconcerting crimes.

Understanding Domestic Homicide

Drawing on his ethnographic research in rural areas of Kentucky, the author of this book presents a thorough look at the experiences of battered women in rural communities. Neil Websdale demonstrates how rural patriarchy and an insidious ol' boy's network of law enforcement and local politics sustains and reproduces the subordinate, vulnerable, isolated position of many rural women. Taking into account that traditional patterns of intervention can often put women in isolated communities at further risk, the author recommends a coordinated multi-agency approach to rural battering, spearheaded by the agencies of state feminism.

An Ethnography

Rural Women Battering and the Justice System

Case histories of some 300 homicides involving family members, framed within their interpersonal, familial, cultural, and situational contexts.

A hard-hitting examination of community policing and its negative impact on the urban poor.

Neil Websdale

About

Books

Join the club