THE GENUINE VIOLENCE CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM (GVCS)
THE GENUINE VIOLENCE CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM (GVCS) represents a novel, empirically grounded framework for understanding, classifying, and comparatively assessing physical interpersonal violence beyond traditional normative criminal law categories. Developed within the CroViMo project, GVCS responds to long-standing theoretical and methodological challenges in violence research, particularly the dominance of legal classifications that reflect institutional needs rather than the lived reality of violence. Its core premise is that violence must be studied as a social phenomenon in its own right, not merely as a legal construct defined by statutory elements or protected legal goods.
GVCS rests on two interrelated pillars. The first pillar is an authentic phenomenological classification of violence, constructed independently of criminal law typologies. Instead of grouping cases according to offences such as homicide, bodily injury, or domestic violence, GVCS identifies violence types based on empirically observable situational contexts, triggers, motives, and victim–offender relationships. This approach resulted in a structured typology of violence that captures recurrent patterns of violent behaviour as they occur in reality, while remaining flexible enough to reflect the diversity and complexity of individual cases.
The second pillar of GVCS is a case-level violence severity assessment model, designed to enable systematic comparison between individual incidents of violence. This model is based on a transparent set of criteria reflecting key dimensions of violent acts, including the characteristics of the violent act itself, the relationship between victim and offender, contextual circumstances, indicators of cruelty, sexual connotation, premeditation, and the consequences for the victim. Each criterion contributes to an overall assessment through a structured weighting system, allowing violence to be evaluated as a multidimensional phenomenon rather than reduced to a single legal label.
Together, these pillars form the conceptual foundation for the so-called “spider-web model” of violence assessment. In this model, each case of violence is represented across multiple dimensions, visually and analytically illustrating the specific configuration of violence severity in that case. This enables researchers and practitioners to move beyond binary distinctions such as violent versus non-violent or serious versus less serious crime, and instead to engage with gradations and qualitative differences in violent behaviour.
GVCS deliberately avoids normative hierarchies of violence that are based solely on statutory maximum penalties or formal offence definitions. Instead, it follows criminological principles of subject-elasticity and scope-flexibility, ensuring that violent reality is not distorted by procedural outcomes, evidentiary limitations, or legal qualifications. Violence that is justified, attempted, unproven, or normatively misclassified is not excluded a priori, but assessed based on its empirical characteristics and harmfulness.
The system was developed through extensive analysis of real violence cases collected within the CroViMo project, ensuring both operational applicability and cultural relevance. Reliability testing demonstrated that, while certain dimensions such as offender motive inherently involve interpretative complexity, the overall structure of GVCS achieves a high level of consistency and transparency. Importantly, GVCS is not presented as a final or immutable taxonomy, but as an open and adaptable framework intended for further refinement, comparative research, and interdisciplinary use.
By publishing GVCS on the CroViMo website, the project makes this innovative system publicly accessible as a scientific, analytical, and educational resource. It is intended for use by researchers, criminal justice practitioners, policymakers, and other stakeholders interested in violence prevention, analysis, and evidence-based decision-making. GVCS offers a new lens through which violence can be systematically observed, compared, and understood, providing a foundation for more targeted prevention strategies and more informed public policies.
Ultimately, the The genuine violence classification system embodies CroViMo’s central ambition: to reveal the criminological reality of violence that remains hidden behind normative abstractions, and to provide tools capable of capturing violence in all its empirical complexity.
I. VARIABLE OVERVIEW
Violence
0. no/false report
1. yes
Sex-related violence
- no
- yes
Cruelty
- no
- yes
Affective
- no
- yes
Relationship
0. stranger
1. intimate partner
2. child
3. parent
4. sibling
5. relative
6. neighbour
7. work-relationship
8. friend/acquaintance
Motive
0. unclear
1. greed
2. jealousy
3. revenge
4. hate
5. (self)defence
6. vigilantism
7. lack of care
8. on request
Type of violence (trigger + situational context)
- Other private violence
- Other public violence
- “Bar” violence
- Thievery violence
- Separation violence
- Neighbourhood violence
- Work-related violence
- Infanticide
- Institutional violence
- Discrimination violence
- Inheritance violence
- Hooliganism
- Enforcement violence
- Blood feuds
- Renting violence
- Violence against police/guards
- Violence by police/guards
- Sex-market violence
- Drug-market violence
- Professional killings
II. DEFINITIONS & DESCRIPTIONS OF BHS VIOLENCE TYPOLOGY VARIABLES
| VIOLENCE | The aim of the variable is to check whether the sampled cases do actually fit the purpose of the sample – to analyse cases of attempted and completed lethal violence as understood by the authors (“any intentional physical harming or killing of another person”). The cases categorised as “0 – no/false report” are offences where in fact no violence has occurred. These cases need to be removed from the sample as they do not pertain to (lethal) violence. It is however important for methodological purposes to know how many of such cases were initially sampled (although later on excluded). |
| 0 – no/false report | The incident is not a case of attempted or completed homicide, but rather a case of false report, an error. |
| 1 – violence | The incident is a case of attempted or completed homicide. |
| SEX RELATED | The aim of this variable is to register if the offence was preceded/followed by or occurred during an (attempt of) rape or any other sexual offence. This includes (attempted) homicide committed during rape, raping of the victim after (attempted) homicide or when the offender (attempts to) kill the victim after the victim refuses the offender’s sexual advances. The purpose of this variable is to examine how many cases of (attempted) homicide were sexually related. |
| 0 – not sex related | The (attempted) homicide does not include any form of sexual activity preceding/during the offence. |
| 1 – sex related | The (attempted) homicide includes some form of sexual activity preceding/during the offence. |
| CRUELTY | The aim of this variable is to denote offences committed using excessive violence towards the victim. Cruelty can be recognised in choice of weapon that causes a great level of suffering (e.g., killing the victim by setting him/her on fire) or mutilating the victim’s body (e.g., dismembering the victim’s body during/after the offence). Differences in sex, age or physical strength between the victim and the offender have no effect on this variable since its main aim is to capture a particularly cruel way of committing a violent offence, not the potential vulnerability of the victim (e.g. child or elderly person). |
| 0 – no cruelty | The offence was not committed with particular cruelty. |
| 1 – cruelty | The offence was committed with particular cruelty. |
| AFFECTIVE | The aim of this variable is to denote whether there is (dis)continuity in the offender’s violent behaviour preceding/during the offence. The variable captures if the offender acted impulsively after a prior provocation, whether he/she had time to ‘cool down’ after such a provocation or decided on committing the violent act beforehand. Examples include cases such as: affective: offender finds his wife with her lover and immediately shoots both of them vs. premeditated: offender finds his wife with her lover, goes to his car to grab a weapon and shoots them upon return. By marking ‘affective’ we also capture offences committed after an argument between the offender and the victim (e.g., after an argument about a money debt, the offender stabs the victim), even though there were issues prior to this argument, the focus should be on the time period closest to the offence, not (possible) prior motives. It is important to note that in all infanticide cases, and the existence of mental illness on the side of the offender (e.g., schizophrenia) the incident should never be consider as affective, since the motive as well as premeditation of a behaviour in such cases are too blurry to be properly detected. Also, by the latter, we can assure that ‘affective’ cases strictly capture cases of an instant and immediate offender’s reaction in which he/she acted affectively, while at the same time excluding cases of insanity/special mental condition where the dynamics of reaction is not as clear. |
| 0 – premeditated | The offender planned the offence beforehand and/or had time after the (perceived) victim’s wrongdoing/provocation toward him/her to ‘cool down’, but instead decided to attack the victim. |
| 1 – affective | The offender reacted impulsively after an argument with the victim and/or after (perceived) victim’s wrongdoing/provocation. |
| VICTIM-OFFENDER RELATIONSHIP | The purpose of the variable is (1) to distinguish stranger violence (value 0) from non-stranger violence, (values 1-8) and then (2) to analyse non-stranger violence according to two different types of victim-offender relationships. For this purpose, we distinguish two categories: 1. domestic relationships (values 1-5), which include intimate partners (both current and former), children, parents, siblings and a broader category of relatives. We use the term ‘domestic’ for values 1-5, not ‘family’ in order to capture the actual relationship which does not necessarily overlap with the blood relationship (e.g., if a grandmother raises her grandson, then she is to be regarded as a parent; e.g., an adopted child or child in foster care is to be considered a child regardless of lacking blood relationship with parents or foster parents); 2. non-domestic relationship (values 6-8) which includes all the relationships that are not strangers or domestic. It pertains to neighbours (living closely/next to each other), work relationships (from prior to the incident or related to the incident) and friends/acquaintances (who know each other from prior to the violent incident). A few rules must be followed when categorising victim-offender relationship. The relationship between the victim and the offender is always considered from the victim’s point of view.In case of concurrency between different relationships, the hierarchy/ranking provided by the given order of the values should be followed in defining the victim-offender relationship. Such a ‘principal relationship rule’ always uses the ‘strongest/closest’ relationship over the weaker relationship according to the order of relationship values provided in the Variable Overview (section I.) (e.g., victim and offender are two brothers who live in the same neighbourhood and work together – their relationship should be classified as siblings over neighbours or work relationship). In cases of multiple victims/offenders, two main rules must be taken into consideration. The first rule is the ‘lethality rule’ where the priority is given to the victim who died over the one who survived, regardless of how close the relationship between the victim and the offender is (e.g., one neighbour that died and one intimate partner that survived – the victim-offender relationship is classified as neighbours over intimate partner despite the victim-offender relationship hierarchy).If all victims in an incident have died or have survived, the second rule is again the above mentioned ‘principal relationship rule’ (e.g., one victim being a neighbour and one intimate partner who both died – their relationship should be classified as intimate partner over neighbours). |
| 0 – stranger | The (main) victim and the (main) offender have no personal relationship prior to the violent incident. Prior to the incident refers to the events that took place in a causal chain of events and are timely closely related to the incident (e.g., two persons meeting for the first time ever for a romantic date which ends violently are to be considered strangers, whereas they are to be considered intimate partners if they already had on-line chats or some sort of communication more than just arranging the date). The main purpose of the stranger value is to denote the lack of prior emotional, verbal, sexual or any other kind of familiarity between the victim and the offender, because the assumption is that the victim might be less suspicious/precautious or a bit more ‘off guard’ when interacting with an offender he/she knows. |
| 1 – intimate partner | Two or more persons who have or have had a love and/or sexual relationship with at least some sort of continuity (including prior one-night stands or a romantic date prior and timely discontinued to the incident). ‘Want-to-be’ intimate relationship ambitions on either of the sides do not count as actual intimate partner relationships. The purpose of this category is to capture a close emotional or a sexual victim-offender relationship due to which the offender had easy access to the victim and the victim was more likely to be less precautious (as compared to cases of stranger violence or violence between less closely related persons). |
| 2 – child | This category captures the vulnerability and trust of the victim – child towards the offender (parent/care giver). It also captures the abuse of this trust by the offender and thus denotes an extremely close and strong (mostly lifelong) relationship between the victim and the offender due to which the victim had no suspicion towards the offender, but rather counts on his/her protection, whereas the offender has the duties and responsibilities of a guardian. |
| 3 – parent | The victim is the offender’s parent or someone enacting this role. This kind of relationship most likely creates gratitude and loyalty on the side of the offender, whereas on the side of the victim it denotes a close relationship. The victim’s guardian status might make them hesitant when defending themselves against an attack by the offender. |
| 4 – sibling | A sibling relationship in the context of a domestic relationship which captures the relationship between two or more people that at least at some point grew up or lived together as siblings. This aspect is far more important than actual blood line, meaning that two persons, not knowing about them being siblings or not growing up in such an environment are not to be considered siblings. |
| 5 – relative (cousin, in-law) | This category essentially captures any other domestic relationship that does not fit into values 1-4, whereby ‘domestic’ refers to some sort of family relationship over a longer period of time (e.g., aunts, cousins, (ex) in-laws). |
| 6 – neighbour | The relationship between people who live next/close to each other (one house next to the other or in the same building). |
| 7 – work relationship | The victim and the offender are bound together by a professional relationship or common workplace. Depending on the actual case, the legal status (e.g., contracted or illegal worker, current or former employee/boss) is of secondary importance, as is the type of profession, which might include co-students, co-criminals, a drug dealer and a user, members of criminal groups, sex-workers and their clients etc. The crucial aspect of this value is a relationship prior to the incident that is best characterised as professional. |
| 8 – friend/acquaintance | This category essentially captures any other non-stranger and non-domestic relationship that does not fit into values 6 or 7. |
| OFFENDER’S MOTIVE | The variable denotes the offender’s most probable dominant motive. The offender’s motive tempore criminis is something known exclusively to the offender himself/herself, thus in many instances even offenders ‘reconstruction’ of the reasoning behind a violent incident after it has already taken place is not objective or realistic. However, enough circumstantial evidence can indicate a specific motive of the offender (e.g., offender had debts and thus took his mother to an insurance agent to sign a life insurance policy prior to killing her by switching her medicine in order to make it look like an accident, all of which would indicate ‘greed’ as the most probable motive of the offender). Often times it is most likely that more than one motive played a role in the offender’s decision, thus the mix of several motives makes up a special motive on its own. In the majority of cases, it might not be possible to clearly determine a motive in terms of an empirical fact. Nevertheless, it is necessary to distinguish between two basic categories: the offender’s motive being unclear (value 0) or clear/evident (values 1-8). The ‘principal motive rule’ is applied, meaning that in case of multiple offenders or motives the primary offender(s) and/or the most dominant motive is taken into consideration. If this is not possible to do, the motive is deemed as unclear. It is important to note that in all infanticide cases, and the existence of mental illness on the side of the offender (e.g., schizophrenia) the motive is always deemed as unclear since these cases are too blurry for a motive to be properly detected. |
| 0 – unclear | It is (a) highly speculative to determine one of the motives (values 1-8) or (b) it is unclear which one of multiple motives is the dominant one or (c) the case involves too many offenders and/or victims to clearly identify one single main motive. |
| 1 – greed | The offender is motivated by acquiring financial gain (e.g., money, drugs, land, car etc.) from their actions, either intending or risking that by doing so they might harm/kill someone. |
| 2 – jealousy | Jealousy as a motive denotes desire of keeping one’s ‘possession’, as opposed to revenge (e.g., for a betrayal or cheating) which is more related to feeling offended or having a hurt ego. Jealousy is focused more on the one who is taking the offenders ‘possession’ (e.g., lover or new partner), whereas revenge is more focused on the person(s) who committed the betrayal (e.g., former or current partner and lover/new partner). |
| 3 – revenge | Revenge denotes a motive directed towards getting even with the victim for some kind of (perceived) wrong that has been committed towards the offender. It is irrelevant whether ‘the wrong’ is essentially banal in its nature or even occurred at all – the perception of the offender that he/she is being the ‘victim’ of some sort of injustice is decisive. Revenge in some instances might seem to overlap with (self)defence, but the difference is that revenge is assigned when ‘the wrong’ against the offender was not a criminal offense/misdemeanour, but rather something more banal (e.g., victim spilled a drink on the offender in a bar). The situation is similar with regards to vigilantism. |
| 4 – hate | Hate denotes the offender being motivated by feelings of hate and/or discrimination based on victim’s nationality/race/political view/sexual orientation etc. (e.g., Croatian offender kills a Serbian victim because of his/her nationality). It is important to keep in mind that not every act of aggression committed between persons of different nationalities/race/political view/sexual orientation etc. is motivated by hate (e.g., the offender (German) kills the victim (Italian) for financial gain – the motive here is greed, regardless of the difference in nationalities). Only those cases where violence resulted directly from the above-mentioned grievances should be considered motivated by hate (e.g., a heated discussion between the offender and the victim in a bar regarding different political views results in an attack). |
| 5 – (self)defence | This type of violence is motivated by protection of life. The offender’s reaction is an immediate response to the victim’s criminal offence. The offender’s protective behaviour can be directed to protect someone else (e.g., victim attacks a child on the street and the offender, in an attempt to defend the child, kills the victim) or be a case of self-protection (e.g., the victim tries to rape the offender and in order to protect herself, she kills him). However, it is important to note that this protective behaviour must be necessary to avert an imminent, real (not only perceived) and potentially deadly attack on oneself or another (e.g., the victim is threatening the offender with his life over the phone while sitting in his home across the street, following which phone call the offender walks over to the victim and attacks him/her – not self-defence; the victim pulls out a knife and starts approaching the offender threatening him, following which the offender shoots the victim – self-defence). |
| 6 – vigilantism | Vigilantism denotes a motive directed towards getting even with the victim for any criminal offence that has been committed by the victim. That criminal offence could have been done against the offender himself/herself, another person or even against an animal or property (e.g., the offender kills the victim who raped his sister in the past; the offender attacks the victim who destroyed his property). Vigilantism is, in fact, a ‘justifiable’ revenge. Therefore, vigilantism can easily be misclassified as revenge, but the main difference between vigilantism and revenge is the fact that the offender suffered an actual criminal offence or misdemeanour committed by the victim (e.g., victim steals a bike from the offender so the offender kills the victim – vigilantism), while in cases of revenge ‘the wrong’ suffered by the offender was not an illegal act, but rather some kind of rude behaviour (e.g., the victim sleeps with the offender’s wife so the offender kills him – revenge). In cases of vigilantism, the offender (could have) reported the criminal offence to the authorities (i.e., stealing a bike is a crime), but instead chose to deal with the injustice himself/herself. On the other hand, ‘the wrong’ done to the offender in cases of revenge could not have been reported to the authorities since they are merely morally questionable, but not illegal acts (i.e., cheating is not a crime). |
| 7 – lack of care | These cases refer to violence committed by accident/non-doing/ unknowingly. Main characteristic of this motive is that the offender was (a) not aware of the consequences of his actions (e.g., offender fires a gun at the victim thinking that it is empty) or (b) had no evident intention of hurting the victim, but was too reckless in his/her behaviour (e.g., the offender had left his 2-year-old child, the victim, alone at home which results in the child swallowing a copious number of pills). |
| 8 – on request | This motive refers to rare cases where the actions that led to the victim being hurt/dying were requested and/or consented to by the victim himself/herself (e.g., the victim asks the offender to put a cable around his/her neck during sexual intercourse, which results in the victim’s death). |
| TYPE OF VIOLENCE | This variable primarily focuses on the combination of a trigger and the situational context. Every one of the values is extensively explained down below. | |
| 1 – Other private violence | This type denotes incidents that take place in a private setting, usually at home, with only the victim and the offender present. This type is applied only when none of the more specific types can be observed (e.g., infanticide, which commonly also takes place in a private setting, but is a more specific type of violence than private violence). The ‘privateness’ or intimacy of this type’s setting indicates that the victim should feel safe and might likely be off-guard, while the offender has more control over unwarranted interruptions by other persons or potential witnesses. | |
| 2 – Other public violence | The idea is to identify all incidents that occur in a public setting and are not in some other way more specified regarding location (bar violence), motive (thievery), or context (hooliganism). The main characteristic of this type of violence is the lack of ‘privateness’ or intimacy characterising private violence, in order to distinguish between e.g., an offender killing his son after a heated argument in a park and an offender killing a stranger in a supermarket. The publicness or openness of the setting indicates that the victim should feel less safe and be more on guard, while the offender has less control over unwarranted interruptions by potential witnesses. | |
| 3 – “Bar” violence | The main characteristic of this type of violence implies a larger group of people in a ‘party atmosphere’ which (usually) includes alcohol consumption, fun and a generally relaxed leisure setting. Although commonly committed in a regular (night) bar, bar violence might also be committed at a home party or a street fair, or in any other location where the same atmosphere is present. If the incident takes place in front of/at the parking lot of a nightclub it is also considered as this type, since the situational context remains the same. However, the mere location of the incident is not enough for determining this type of violence (e.g., the offender and the victim have an argument over a money debt while drinking in a bar and the offender kills the victim – the money debt makes this case more specific, hence, it is a case of enforcement violence, despite being located in a bar). | |
| 4 – Thievery violence | This type is characterised by the context and setting of trying/gaining financial profit through thievery. These cases usually pertain to robbery, burglary or theft ‘gone wrong’. The context of illegally gaining financial profit can be found either on the side of the offender or on the side of the victim, the latter indicating that the person being robbed might end up being the actual offender with regards to the violent incident, whereas the case motive would be (self)defence. The decision to combine robbery, burglary and theft ‘gone wrong’ within thievery violence is based on the finding that the difference between robbery-, burglary- and theft-cases cannot be determined clearly enough based on collected case file information. Consistency and accuracy of ‘typing’ were chosen over the ‘specialty’ of the three different offenses, since all three unquestionably are thievery in nature when it comes to context and setting. | |
| 5 – Separation violence | The main criterion for this type of violence is the offender’s dissatisfaction over the fact that his/her intimate relationship is ending or has ended. The main focus is on the ‘being broken up with’. Thereby the relationship between the victim and the offender is irrelevant – the context and setting are decisive, meaning that the victim of separation violence is not only the offender’s (former) intimate partner, but may also be the new or a previous partner, or even a passer-by caught in the crossfire. | |
| 6 – Neighbourhood violence | A case must meet two criteria for this violence type; 1) offender and the victim must be neighbours and 2) the conflict must be related to the fact that they are neighbours (e.g., victim plays music too loud and the offender comes at his door and shoots him). Conflict between two neighbours that is not directly related to them being neighbours should not be considered as a part of this violence type (e.g., one neighbour kills the other because he was having an affair with his wife). | |
| 7 – Work-related violence | The main criterion that needs to be met for this type of violence is that the violent act was in some way related to the offender’s and/or the victim’s work(place). Therefore, this type of violence most commonly occurs between those whose relationship is work-related (e.g., the offender finds out his business partner stole from the company so he kills him; the offender kills his former boss because he fired him). However, that might not always be the case. The sufficient feature in these cases is the fact that violence occurred in relation to either one of their jobs (e.g., the offender kills a government official because they turned off his electricity). This applies to any type of work other than police/guards/bouncer/etc. covered in more specific violence types (violence against police/guards and violence by police/guards). | |
| 8 – Infanticide | Infanticide refers to violence committed by a mother towards her new-born child. The victim-offender, more accurately, the child-mother relationship is the key characteristic in these cases. It is important to keep in mind that the child must be a new-born. Regardless of different normative frameworks regulating infanticide, the goal is to capture the criminological reality of an act that includes 1) a mother in an (assumed) irregular mental condition right after birth, and 2) the child victim within one month of birth. All cases where someone other than the child’s mother kills the new-born, or where the violence was committed towards a child older than 1 month should be excluded from this category. Additionally, infanticide can occur both by doing (e.g., mother gives birth and suffocates the new-born with a pillow) and by non-doing (e.g., mother had given birth to her child and then left the baby in a bathroom without feeding it which resulted in baby’s death). | |
| 9 – Institutional violence | The only criterion for this violence type is that it occurred in an institution (e.g., school, hospital, prison etc.). The goal is detecting violence inside of a closed and formal environment with some kind of specific rules and personnel responsible for keeping the place safe (e.g., one prison inmate stabs another). | |
| 10 – Discrimination violence | This type of violence denotes cases that were in some way caused by feelings of hate/discrimination toward a specific group based on their race/nationality/sexual orientation/etc. A member of the discriminated group can be the victim (e.g., the offender (Croat) yells “all Serbs need to die” and then kills the victim (Serb)), as well as the offender (e.g., the victim insults the offender based on his sexual orientation, so the offender kills him). For a more detailed explanation of when the motive can be considered as hate/discrimination please see the description of the said motive. | |
| 11 – Inheritance violence | This violence type refers to violence which has its roots in the dispute over any form of inheritance. This type most frequently occurs between family members (e.g., offender kills his brother in order to inherit their father’s apartment), although it is possible to occur between other types of relationship (e.g., the offender kills the attorney who handled the inheritance division). | |
| 12 – Hooliganism | The main features of this violence type are: 1) violence being committed among fans of sport club(s) and 2) offence rooted in some kind of a disagreement regarding sports. This type of violence most commonly occurs between a group of spectators in connection to football events and it is usually placed around stadiums and connected to riots caused by cheering for opposite teams during a game. However, the offence must be committed in connection to sport and sport club fans. | |
| Self- justice violence | 13 – Enforcement violence | An offence must fulfil one main criteria in order to be classified as this violence type; one person must owe something to the other (e.g., money, car, mobile phone etc.). This type of violence is, most commonly committed due to an unresolved issue regarding debt collecting. It should be noted that these cases exclude debt cases where the context is more specific (e.g., the tenant owes the rent to his landlord – renting violence, client owing money to the prostitute for her sexual services – sex-market violence or a consumer owing the dealer money for drugs – drug-market violence). When it comes to the offender’s motive, if the offender is the debtor, the motive is greed since his/her main goal is to keep the money that is not rightfully his/hers. While contrary, if the offender is the creditor, he/she is motivated by revenge because his/her main goal is to retrieve something that is rightfully his/hers. |
| 14 – Blood feuds | An offence must meet two criteria in order to be classified as ‘blood feud’ violence; 1) offender and the victim come from two different families and 2) their families are in some sort of dispute, either prior to the violent incident or in relation/caused by events related to the violent incident. These kinds of offences are usually caused by the offenders’ belief that the victim has brought shame or dishonour upon their family, or has violated the culture principles of their community. Honour killings should also be listed under this category. | |
| 15 – Renting violence | The criteria that need to be fulfilled for this type of violence are 1) the relationship between the offender and the victim is based on one of them renting something to the other and 2) the violence was committed due to unpaid rent. Although similar to enforcement violence, the fact that the relationship between the offender and the victim is based on a legal and most likely formal circumstance makes renting violence more specific. | |
| Crime-related violence | 16 – Violence against police/guards | Violence against police/guards denotes offences where the victim is a police officer/guard/bouncer on duty who was attacked in relation to their job (e.g., the offender shots a security guard because he tried to stop him from robbing a bank; police officer responded to domestic violence call, where the violent husband shoots him). |
| 17 – Violence by police/guards | Violence by police/guard denotes offences where the offender is a police officer/guard/bouncer on duty who hurts the victim by using excessive force (e.g., security guard kills the robber during the bank robbery; police officer responded to domestic violence call, where he kills the violent husband during the arrest). In cases where there was no excessive use of force, these incidents should not even appear in the sample as they should not be considered criminal offenses, but justified (attempted) killings within the boundaries of lawful use of force. | |
| 18 – Sex-market violence | Two criteria need to be met for this this violence type, 1) the offender and/or the victim are engaged in the sex-market (whether as sex workers, solicitors, or customers) and 2) the incident needs to be related to the sex-market business. That is to say, the sole fact that the offender/victim is in this type of business is not enough to be considered as sex market violence (e.g., the offender kills his girlfriend because he found out she works as a prostitute – not sex-market violence). Therefore, the cause behind the attack has to be in some way connected to the sex-market itself (e.g., the offender kills the prostitution solicitor because he refuses to lower the price – sex-market violence). | |
| 19 – Drug-market violence | This violence type denotes offences that occurred due to a “drug deal went wrong”. This violence type most commonly occurs between drug dealer(s) and buyer(s), whether regarding a previous money transaction that went wrong (e.g., the offender attacks the victim because he failed to pay the drugs on time) or any other reason connected to drug purchase (e.g., the offender attacks the victim because he is selling drugs on “his turf”). If the offence committed between a consumer and a dealer is motivated by something else (e.g., the victim is having an affair with his drug dealer’s wife, so the dealer kills him), the mere drug-market involvement of either victim or offender or both is not enough to be consider as this violence type, unless it is related to the drug-market itself. | |
| 20 – Professional killings | This violence type pertains to offences where one person paid another to kill the victim, regardless whether the offender is the client hiring the hitman or the hitman him/herself. However, it is important to note that the professional hitman is always motivated by greed, while the client’s motive can vary. | |
Book recommendation: Getoš Kalac, Anna-Maria (2021). Violence in the Balkans: First Findings from the Balkan Homicide Study. Springer