Homicide in the Context of Killing (USP)

The Frequency of Homicide

1. The homicide problem is qualitative, not so much quantitative.

Homicide is one of the less common causes of death. There are 7.6 billion human beings on earth worldwide (2018). Every year, 130 million babies are born, and 55 million people die. That is 15 000 births and 6 300 deaths each hour, or an annual rate of 1900 births and 800 deaths per 100 000 population. By the way, in 2016, the number of deaths among children under age 5 dropped below 5 million for the first time in modern history — down from 11 million deaths in 1990 and 16.4 million in 1970. But let us come to the relative importance of homicide: Of the 800 deaths per 100 000 population per year, only 6 or 7 are due to homicide, adding up to an absolute number of around half a million homicide victims per year worldwide. That is more than deaths of cancer of the pancreas (330 000), and even much more than deaths due to war and terrorism (even though that number went up by 140 per cent from 2006 to now 150 000) - but it is less than deaths due to breast cancer (571 000) or lung cancer (1.7 million). Compared with the total number of deaths due to non-communicable diseases (36 million) or even with suicide (800 000), homicide is (much) less frequent. Death by war, terrorism, and homicide are comparatively seldom. They seem to be a qualitative problem more than a quantitative one.

With a worldwide average homicide rate of around 6 per 100,000 inhabitants, homicide is one of the less frequent causes of death in the real world. see: Global Study on Homicide. In that sense, we can say that we are relatively safe.

Homicide is relevant because of its quality.

"The study of intentional homicide is relevant not only because it is the study of the ultimate crime, whose ripple effect - efeito cascata - goes far beyond the initial loss of human life, but because lethal violence can create a climate of fear and uncertainty. Intentional homicide also victimizes the family and community of the victim, who can be considered secondary victims, and when justice is not served, impunity can lead to further victimization in the form of the denial of the basic human right to justice." (UNODC)

2. What does it mean when homicide deaths become quantitatively dominant?

On the other hand, let us think for a minute. We have heard that the world's population is right now at 7.6 billion. And that quantitatively, homicide does not play a major role. But quantities have two sides. They can be regarded as rates, but also as absolute numbers. In absolute numbers, 500 000 homicide deaths are 500 000. And that is a lot more than the whole world had inhabitants in the middle of the 14th century, namely 370 million in the year 1350.

2.1 In the imaginary universe of the mainstream mass media, homicide has become the most common cause of death. Even more so in entertainment than in the news (from the Silence of the Lambs to Dexter and CSI Miami, Las Vegas, New York). Why is that so and what functions does that fulfill?

2.2 In the real world there are segments and places in which homicide is the number one killer. According to the Center of Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, USA, that is the case for black men between the ages of 15 and 34. Accidents ranked second, and suicide third (15 and 24 years), while heart disease ranked third for men 24-34.

For the Rohingya of Myanmar and white farmers in South Africa, things look similarly bleak. An average of 2 homicides per 100 000 population is normal in Western Europe. The world average is about 6. Where the average reaches 20 security issues begin to dominate everyday life and conversations. Where the average reaches 40 people dream of getting out of the country. There are only a few countries where rates are higher - presently Honduras, and Venezuela belong to this unfortunate category. With a rate of 81, El Salvador is presently on top of the list. When there was a day without a murder in this country, that was seen as so newsworthy it was reported in countries as far away as New Zealand, Thailand and Russia. For young African-Americans in metropolitan areas that rate is above 100, and for white farmers in South Africa it has recently risen to 130. Extreme homicide rates indicate severe structural tensions - often race. class, and inequality related.

3. Homicide in Latin America: Murder, inequality, and the war on drugs

From a briefing on murder in the Economist of April 7th, 2018:

• just 8% of the world’s population, but accounts for 38% of its criminal killing.
• The butcher’s bill in the region came to around 140,000 people last year, more than have been lost in wars around the world in almost all of the years this century.
• Latin America is also the most urbanised part of the developing world, and that is not a coincidence. Its urban population grew in the second half of the 20th century much faster than those of other regions.
• Some countries in the south of the region have urbanised as fast as those in its north, but murder rates in the south remain comparable to that of the United States. The drug trade in the northern part of the region undoubtedly makes a big difference.
• The Small Arms Survey, a research group, has three scenarios for the world up to 2030: one in which murder trends continue; one in which the trends seen in the countries that are doing best with murder in their region are exported to their neighbours; and one in which trends start to match those in some of the worst-performing countries. The difference between the best case and the worst adds up to 2.6m lives.
• Extortion gangs are responsible for a lot in some parts of Central America, drug-trafficking in others (though Costa Rica and Panama, both on the drug route, are relatively peaceful).
• Institutional weaknesses were widespread. Police and prosecutors in the region are badly trained, underpaid and often corrupt.
• In some places only one in 20 reports of murder leads to a conviction.
• Brutal government crackdowns often make things worse
• Grossly overpopulated prisons have became crime factories rather than rehabilitation centres.
• The vicious circle could be transformed into a virtuous one.
• Where murder is high it is also heavily concentrated. According to Robert Muggah of the Igarapé Institute, a Brazil-based think-tank, approximately 80% of homicides in large and medium-sized Latin American cities occur on just 2% of the streets. Identifying those hotspots is crucial. Policies which use reliable data to give priority to high-risk places and people have chance of success. Armed people (including police and military) belong to the high-risk people in this context.
• Lawrence Sherman, a criminologist, concluded in 2012 that chronic lack of data “is not an obstacle to solving an important problem. It is the most important problem.”
• Latin American governments spend an average of 5% of their budgets on internal security—twice as much as developed countries. A recent IDB study estimates the direct costs of violent crime in the region—measured by such things as spending on police, hospitals, insurance and private security, and the lost wages of prisoners—at $236bn a year, calculated on a purchasing-power basis. At $300 per person, that is much higher than in developed countries. In El Salvador the cost of murder works out at 1% of GDP a year.
• El Salvador: In 2004 President Francisco Flores put soldiers on the streets and threw thousands of gang members into prison to clamp down on crime. Murders went up. In March 2012 the government of Mauricio Funes brokered a truce between El Salvador’s three main gangs, giving imprisoned leaders luxuries like flat-screen televisions and fried chicken if they would tell their subordinates to stop killing each other. Murders halved almost overnight, and some criminologists applauded, seeing the policy as a step towards “focused deterrence”—a combination of incentives and threats that is deemed to have worked well in Los Angeles. But the truce soon began to unravel, and the gangs began to see violence as a bargaining tool. In early 2015 President Salvador Sánchez-Cerén sent the army back on to the streets and returned gang leaders to top-security prisons. Murders rocketed to 104 per 100,000 people. The number dropped back by 40% over the next two years, something the government put down to “extraordinary measures” in the prisons; for two years tens of thousands of gang members have seen no relatives, no doctors and no daylight. At the same time the number of members of the public shot by police has gone up 15-fold, sparking an international outcry. “The treatment that the state provides shouldn’t be as bad as the sickness itself,” says the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Agnes Callamard. And for the past six months the murder rate has been on the rise again.
• In 1994 the murder rate in Cali was 124 per 100,000 people. The mayor set up “violence observatories” where police, public-health officials, academics and concerned citizens could study crime data. This revealed that most of the city’s murders took place in drunken brawls, not in conflict between gangs, and that they were late at night a day or so after payday. Restricting alcohol sales and gun permits helped cut the homicide rate by 35% in a matter of months. Some experts believe that the only way for developing countries to curb high homicide rates on a permanent basis is systemic reform. But data-driven policing can buy the time. In 2017 Colombia announced a murder rate of 24 per 100,000 people, its lowest in 42 years. That is still high, though, and there are more problems to come.
• In 2016 Ignacio Cano looked at 93 homicide-reduction programmes in the region, including controls on alcohol in Brazil, an advertising campaign exhorting Venezuelans to “value life”, private investigators paid to help public prosecutors in Honduras, a $400m justice reform in Mexico and mediation with criminals in Jamaica and El Salvador. Some coincided with impressive drops in murder rates—but only 16% actually tried to evaluate their impact.

Fernanda Mena in Folha de S.P. (21 de abril 2018):

• Brazil murder rate three times the "accepted" rate of around 10 per 100,000: 29,7 (Sergipe: 64) - 61.284 mortos
• 100 inquéritos policiais de homicídio geram 34 denúncias por parte do Ministério Público e só 5 chegam ao julgamento.
• Cuso mensal de prisao pouco menos que um ano de escola (2.400 - 2.800 R$).
• Randolph Roth American Homicide compares with little trust in government in Brazil
• Courts: papel: 316 días para o processamento de um caso de homicidio, mas, fora do papel, ele demora oito anos e seis meses, na média.
• Nao basta construir presídios, tem que prender com sentido

The Anthropology of Homicide

4. Intraspecific intragroup violence is at the core of the homicide question. Violence of the human animal is much like violence of the non-human animal. Animal violence is usually interspecific: The predators practice offensive violence, whereas their victims practice defensive violence to prevent being eaten. Intraspecific competition is usually ritualized and related to fight for access to food, water, and sex. On the other hand, intra-specific killings are not as rare as once believed. Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, 1966, still believed that that intra-specific killings like homicide and warfare only occurred in humans. Fact is that human violence is normally interspecific, but regularly also intraspecific. Intraspecific violence has proven to be useful in evolutionary terms. Especially for males: Reproductive benefits from intergroup (intra-specific) aggression are high in humans, but primarily accrue to males. - Intraspecific violence of the human animal normally takes the form of intergroup violence which tends to reinforce parochial altruism and improved survival chances. Human patterns of warfare, especially risk-taking, require private incentives or sanctions to solve the collective action problem. This is especially true for humans, and within human groups it is more common in cultures with greater risk-taking and elaborate cultural institutions and complex social organization. In more recent evolutionary times, variation in war practices reflects cultural group selection. Features of more successful groups spread within and between populations. Warfare can enable the rise of ultrasocial normals and complex societies. Groups that contain more individuals willing to behave altruistically towards in-group members, and act parochially towards outgroup members may achieve greater evolutionary success in warfare driving the evolution of human parochial altruism. Self-sacrificial behaviour in war is thus associated with improved group outcomes. Intergroup violence enhances survival chances of those best at it - developing over time both a strong parochial altruism and equally strong xenophobia. - But: When intraspecific violence goes intragroup, there is a higher likelihood of negative social reactions (definition as homicide and intensive sanctions).

The reason why homicide is seen as something exceptionally bad does not even lie in the fact that it is the killing of another human being - i.e. an intraspecies act of aggression. - It is true that human life has a higher value than other lives. This is not necessarily a natural order of things, but we have learned - since the stoneage revolution and the rise of monotheistic religions - to devalue the living environment of human life, and to cherish human life as having some innate higher value. Harari. In that sense, humans are behaving like a Band of Brothers. Against the rest. - We could even explain why societies scandalize the loss of human life through homicides. Accidents and diseases also kill people, as do predators, but the killing of a human by another human seems avoidable and scandalous, since it undermines trust and the very conditions that have to be fulfilled to guarantee the very possibility of living together in one society. This is why the murder of one person is a crime not only against that individual, but against everyone. Kant.

The moral condemnation of murder can be seen everywhere. The biblical 5th commandment - Thou Shalt Not Kill - expresses condemnation with the utmost authority. Murder is followed by the severest of all punishments. In many countries, a convicted murderer will be murdered by the State, i.e. executed. In moral philosophy, there is little regret about this. Philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that whoever kills must die (and it is a categorical duty, not a hypothetical one) and 'no possible substitute can satisfy justice. For there is no parallel between death and even the most miserable life, so that there can be no equality of crime and retribution unless the perpetrator is judicially put to death. Thomas Aquinas: Criminal offenses can be broken down into two general categories malum in se and malum prohibitum. The distinction between malum in se and malum prohibitum offenses is best characterized as follows: a malum in se offense is "naturally evil as adjudged by the sense of a civilized community," whereas a malum prohibitum offense is wrong only because a statute makes it so. Murder is, of course, a malum in se. Therefore, the reason why homicide is exceptionally bad does not lie in the fact that it is a killin alone. - While the 5th Commandment says "Thou shalt not kill" - insinuating that the very act of killing is what makes it reprehensible - this cannot be the real reason. To kill means to end the existence of a living organism. We can kill people, but also animals like cats, dogs or sheep or pigs or cattle or cangoroos, or trees or plants or any other living organism. Thou shalt not kill does not contain a qualification or restriction. If the mere act of killing were what makes murder so extremely reprehensible a behaviour, than all of the mentioned examples of killing would have to entail a similar judgment by society. But that is evidently not the case. In spite of the 5th commandment, we do not rate all killing behaviour as morally bad.

For one thing, there is the religious taboo - "Thou shalt not kill" - very strong, very clear, and quite intimidating; and then there is the legal prohibition to kill, similarly strong, clear, and intimidating, considering that the sanction for violations of this norm are the most severe ones, and in some cases it is tit for tat - whoever kills must be killed. - On the other hand, to be a human means to kill and to depend on killings. If to kill means to put an end to the existence of an organism, then we are all killers. We kill plants, like, e.g., trees, by chopping them to sell the wood and to make place for farm land, but we also kill plants by harvesting potatoes, cereals or other food-stuff. We kill animals mostly for producing food for us humans, and we kill humans for many reasons. We kill humans in self-defense and in anger, jealousy. We kill because of greed and hate, and sometimes people kill themselves. We also kill because we are told to do so, because we are members of a hierarchy, a cartel, a gang, a militia, a group of mercenaries, or regular soldiers. Add to this the killing of animals in slaughterhouses and the killing of trees and plants, and find out that the human animal is not as peaceful as it seems, but that the position on top of the food chain means to be a killer.

5. Is the male human animal a schizophrenic killer?

Cum grano salis, yes. He likes to think of himself as a peaceful being, but indulges in the extermination of living organisms - including of his own species.

• Alexander Georgiev (2013): Humans are a highly aggressive species in comparison to other animals, probably as a result of an unusually high benefit-to-cost ratio for intra-specific aggression (male-male coalitionary killings). Early modern humans killed each other at a rate of about 1300 in 100,000. But the worst is the meerkat: 20,000 out of 100,000 (mostly youngsters) lose their lives at the paws and jaws of their own kind (José María Gómez et al. 2016). The meerkats are followed by two types of monkeys and assorted lemurs, the New Zealand sea lion, long-tailed marmot, lion, branded mongoose, and grey wolf - then comes the human animal (fission-fusion). A consolation: Killings of humans by humans are not an immutable feature of all members and collectives of humans. Much depends on the environment (Maori vs. Moriori).

6. Genocide is not foreign to the human species. It can be seen as specific kind of coalitionary intergroup aggression that occurs when attackers are able to kill at high gain and low cost to themselves.

Georgiev: "Consider, for example, the situation of the European colonial armies that first encountered the local populations in America, Africa, Asia, or Australia. The benefits of using violent aggression against the indigenous populations were enormous: taking away their land, their possessions, and even their people to use as slaves. The costs of the colonists’ aggression were minimal: armed with rifles, they could quickly kill large numbers of indigenous individuals at little or no physical risk to themselves. Moreover, the indigenous populations looked different and spoke a different language; it must have been quite easy for the colonists to find a psychological, political, historical, or religious justification for their violence, without suffering any consequences. These unusually high benefit/cost ratios for violent aggression against people from other countries are rare or nonexistent in animals, which may explain why large-scale aggression toward conspecifics is absent in animals, with the possible exception of chimpanzees and some species of ants and termites that stage wars against other colonies, destroying or taking away their resources and enslaving the workers."

While estimates are ranging all the way from one to three billion, it is an undisputable fact that the intra-species killing of humans by humans in wars has cost so many lives in the course of human history that it is simply impossible to maintain the thesis that what makes murder so exceptionally "bad" is the general respect for human life. And while there are many animals that would never ever kill other members of their own species, the human animal does not have such a barrier in his behavioral repertory. Military, mercenaries, militias, violent gangs, police, euthanasia physicians, and others do kill with a license to kill under certain conditions. The reason why homicide is seen as something exceptionally bad resides in its disobedience with respect to enforceable group interests.

We are living in an age of ethical and moral universalism. We have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and universal claims of religions. But when we look at the moral boundaries between allowed and prohibited killings, we soon recognize that there are two different evaluations concerning killings. Killings in the name and interest of the collective are good and laudbale, but killings in just one's own selfish, egotistical interest are forbidden and scandalized.

Examples for moral boundaries along these lines:

• The Jain proscribe all killings, but when it comes to warfare, they require obedience to the commanders
• Intragroup killings are regularly considered reprehensible and severely punished. This goes for illegal groups as well as for legal ones. For PCC as well as BOPE.

While murder is dysfunctional for the collective, killing in coalitionary intergroup aggression including war is good for the survival of the dominant sub-population of that species (and indirectly for the species itself at the expense of its peaceful segments). Insofar, there are important remnants of phylogenetic roots and parochial altruism as well as xenofobia.

The History of Homicide

7. Today humans are living in the most peaceful era ever.

According to Steven Pinker (2011), the big picture is that of the human animal becoming more civilized - less violent towards cospecifics - by the millenia and by the centuries, so that we are now living in the most peaceful era of human existence since Adam and Eve.

Early humans killed each other at a rate of about 2,000 in 100,000, but got more violent during the Middle Ages when the rate shot up to 12,000 in 100,000. After studying 600 human populations from the Stone Age to the present day, researchers concluded that "lethal violence is part of our evolutionary history but not carved in stone in our genes. Levels of violence are influenced by societal pressures and have decreased significantly in the contemporary age. Gomez: The level of lethal violence is reversible and can increase or decrease as a consequence of some ecological, social, or cultural factors.

Divergent Futures

8. The global Scandinavia: no wars, less homicide, and ever more peaceful cooperation

1. Peace for the World (Henner Hess, Weltstaat; Robert Wright: Non-Zero. The Logic of Human Destiny). Convergences in cultural form and dynamics across the globe suggest that for all its richness and diversity humankind is on a trajectory toward a common goal: globalized trade and communication. Notwithstanding tensions of rabid nationalism and environmental perturbation, in the medium and long term the outlook is positive. The end of bloody world wars has already come. The World State only knows military police operations like Libya and the anti-ISIS campaign.
2. Inclusion. From the abolition of slavery over workers' rights and voting rights for women, inclusion will proceed to non-human animals (Kymlicka & Davidson: Zoopolis). Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer: The Great Ape Project (GAP, 1993). Advocating a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes. Right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture for non-human great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans.
3. New Ethics: From Taking "Thou Shalt not Kill" seriously (Ahimsa) to Transhumanism (h+): Reprogramming Predators (David Pearce). The Fifth Commandment vs. the torah's Sixth Commandment: thou shalt not kill vs. thou shalt not murder (parochial intragroup ethics vs. universalism; specieism/especismo vs. holiness of life). 2 Moises/Deuteronomio ch. 20, v 13: ratsah - to murder; harag - to kill. - Christianity (mis-) translated "murder" into "killing": but it never took "ne occides" (Vulgata; Deuteronominon; Jerome = Hieronymus= Geronimo) seriously. The Bible itself is full of legitimised homicides and genocides. Whereas "thou shalt not kill" (St. James Bible) is a general commandment, it has never been thought of as referring also to the killing of animals or plants.

9. The New Helotes: lawlessness and subservience

The Helotes' world: rights reduced. With living conditions worsening in relative and absolute terms for the majority, and with no economic function for it, misery and sporadic revolt wil be as common as violent police interventions in hotspot-regions of restless helotes with their reduced rights and conditions. Superfluous, Subordinated, Dispossessed, Displaced, and Derelict: the helots, a subjugated population group that formed the main population of Laconia and Messenia, the territory controlled by Sparta. Their exact status was already disputed in antiquity: according to Critias, they were "slaves to the utmost", whereas according to Pollux, they occupied a status "between free men and slaves". Tied to the land, they primarily worked in agriculture and economically supported the Spartan citizens. At the time of the Battle of Plataea in 479 BC, there were - according to Herodotus - seven helots for each Spartan, which explains the need to keep the helot population in check and prevent rebellions. That was one of the main concerns of the Spartans: helots were ritually mistreated, humiliated and even slaughtered: every autumn the Spartans would declare war on the helots so they could be killed without fear of repercussion. Uprisings and attempts to improve the lot of the helots did occur, but were unsuccessful

Diferentemente dos escravos, os hilotas eram propriedade do Estado, que administrava a produção econômica. Durante a Cripteia um grupo de jovens espartanos era designado para assassinar líderes em potencial entre os hilotas.

At present the fight for resources has already begun (water-wars). There is a growing global sub-proletariat without economic function and with no possible integration. They do not live in a coherent territory, but within nation states and mega-cities (see crime maps).

1. Fragile Truce: we are witnessing a renewed increase in deaths by political violence from above and below, including extrajudicial killings and social cleansing.
2. Exclusion: with universalism retreating, parochial altruism (in-group coherence) and xenofobia are drawing new moral boundaries between classes and races.
3. Denizenship: instead of full citizenship, the Helotes will be ruled by a differential system of entitlements and access rules, pitting them against each other through indirect rule (Bantustans, patrolled no-gone zones etc.). Resource allocation will be in the hands of the powerful and their quislings. Incursions and arbitrary arrests and killings will be embedded in that new kind of governance.
4. Impoverishment and Oppression.
5. Diminished legal status: While the criminal code condemns all murder, law-in-action follows a second code. By and by, what started as the split between the first and second code, will tend to be justified politically and enshrined in formal law. Extended shoot-to-kill-powers for police. See: Police killings Example: Stephon Clark. Or: Rodrigo Duterte's policy in the Philippines.

The consequence: an ever deeper cleavage between a kind of Scandinavian world of the good, rich, and beautiful - and a sad and dark world of the have-nots in terms of material wealth, education, and welfare, the new Helotes.

10. A necessary condition for the cleavage (decote) is the interplay between good people and those who do the dirty work.

Sources

• Arline Geronimus (1998): For 15 -19 year old African American males in major metropolitan areas homicide is the leading cause of death.
• Hughes, Everett C. (1948) Good People - Dirty Work.
• Igarapé Institute (2018) Homicide Monitor
• Latin America's Violent Crime ... The Economist 7 April 2018
• Mena, Fernanda (2018) E agora, Brasil? segurança pública. Um diagnóstico da violência no Brasil, os problemas e as propostas vindas de pesquisas, dados nacionais e internacionais e análises. Folha de S.P., 21 de abril
• Pearce, David (2009) Reprogramming Predators
• Pearce, David (2009) Para um mundo sem crueldade. Reprogramar os Predadores
• Williams, Juan: Murder is No 1 cause of death.

See Also

• Töten und Nicht-Töten