英文摘要 |
The aims of this study are to clarify the definitional issues of indiscriminate murder, analyze relevantpolicies in different countries, collect evidence in Taiwan and make recommendations.Based on our empirical research findings, “indiscriminate murder” is our preferred proxy term for“random killing” or “mass/stranger killing”. There are two sub-categories of indiscriminate murders –classical and non-classicial. Classical indiscriminate murders are cases involving offenders with randomlychosen times, places, and victims to kill without any definite motivation. Non-classical indiscriminatemurders are similar however, but with an element of personal motivation.Our literature search and review found that countries defined indiscriminate murder mainly based ontheir own previous societal experiences and developed policies thereafter. For example, Norway, after theBreivik case, focused on improving the leadership response, identifying risk populations, active policeoperations, information exchange and communication. Japan, with more than fifty indiscriminate murdercases over the past 10 years, emphasizes the social, psychological and mental status and policies in relationto potential risk populations, while in Taiwan, while mostly sharing a similar approach, also attempts tolink drug abuse issues with such crimes. The USA, on the other hand, focuses on mass killing and developsa full set of risk assessment, management, classification, and diversion protocols.In terms of evidence-based policies, this study uses a multi-method research method. A speciallydesigned questionnaire was distributed to a control group (n=50) and four murder inmate groups (n=211,two invalid), namely, indiscriminate murder (5%), stranger murder with motivation (28%), domesticmurder (30%), and acquaintance murder (37%). The response rate was 91%. There were fifteen in-depthinterviews with indiscriminate murder inmates, with full psychiatric examinations and psychologicalassessment by the research team. Their previous court psychiatric forensic reports, if any, were provided assupplementary documents for analysis.The study’s main findings are, first, there were no significant differences among the five groups onself-esteem, violent attitudes, cynicism, social alienation and mental health; secondly, compared withthe control group, indiscriminate murderers had much lower empathy, raised in multiple high risk familysituations, failed to form intimate relationships and with high school dropout rates, but no significantdifferences with other murder groups in terms of anti-social personality, feelings of loneliness, depression,substance abuse, and prior criminal record; thirdly and finally, there are similar personality traits withinthe four murder groups, in terms of self-esteem, violent attitudes, cynicism, feelings of anger, depression,social anxiety, lack of intimate relationships, substance abuse, drop out, high risk family, and prior criminalrecords. This finding would suggest there is little sense in developing specific prevention strategies inrespect of indiscriminate murder.Our study suggests that an integrated secondary prevention and tertiary prevention network is muchmore important than primary prevention. Apart from sharing the e-high risk database, we recommendappointment of a high-rank social safety team manager to be in charge of supervising the whole processincluding in-take, classification, resources allocation and follow-up assessment. The study also tested anassumed integrated model which would have merged the existing six social safety databases in Taiwanwith our 15 individual cases. We found that the highest predictor hit rate would be in the adult priorrecord judicial system (0.73), followed by national mental health records (0.60), high risk family welfarereporting system (0.53), drop out educational reporting system (0.47) as well as juvenile prior recordsystem (0.47). Among the 15 cases, less than 2 percent were unaccounted for in the five social safelysystems if all systems work as they are designed. Less than one percent was missing if the national suicidereporting system is included. |