Citation

Koretsky DA, Steshich ES. Russian journal of criminology 2019; 13(2): 207-214.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019)

DOI

10.17150/2500-4255.2019.13(2).207-214

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Any research of homicidal crime cannot ignore the common circumstances that unite murder and suicide into a single complex of social pathology. The specific weight of suicides exceeded the specific weight of murders almost twice among the external causes of death in 2017 -- 14.4 % and 6.4 %, correspondingly. The classics of criminology and the leading modern scholars pointed out that there is an inverse relationship between the number of suicides and murders ("self-killers are timid murderers" thesis), besides, suicides could be murders in disguise or the consequences of driving somebody to suicide; often if there is a possibility to view an incident as a suicide (and even if there is no such possibility), other investigation leads practically do not get checked. A number of cases where somebody's life was taken were classified as suicides, although neither the method, nor the impact mechanism were typical of suicides. This happens especially often if the dead person is imprisoned or serves in the armed forces. Having analyzed the legislative initiatives that link the growth in the number of teenage suicides with the emergence of the so-called groups of death, encouraging teenagers to commit suicides in online groups, the authors conclude that this is, in fact, just a "fake target" used to distract the attention of the society from the objective causes of such behavior and to avoid costly prevention measures. The authors name to true causes of such actions and present their ideas regarding the measures to prevent both suicidal behavior and the camouflaging of murders as suicides. © 2019, Baikal National University of Economics and Law. All rights reserved.

Language: ru

Keywords

Homicide; Suicide; Murder; «groups of death»; Bringing to suicide