Serial Killers

The phenomenon of “serial killers” is real cancer of modern society. In fact, this term takes its roots from 1970’s. Legally, this kind of crime derivation is determined in next way – a serial killer is one who murders three or more victims, with “cooling-off” periods between each murder (Freeman 1). However, this definition does not give the comprehensive meaning about analyzed term. Today, we are going to take deep look at different aspects of appropriate socially dangerous criminal behavior. It is stated that the multiple nature of serial killing does not allow society to get the universal solution to deal with this problem and does not let society to prevent someone from a serial killer becoming.

The issue of serial killers’ behavior seems to be one of the most relevant among others. To get the idea about multiple of its types, the words of Shanna Freeman is to the point. According to this author, all cases of serial killers behaviors should be classified according to their social and organizational skills: “Serial killers can be organized or disorganized (depending on the type of crime scene) and nonsocial or asocial (depending on whether they are excluded by society or exclude themselves). The following chart illustrates behaviors of the two most common types” (Freeman 2).

However, the recent statistics allows us to get the average figure of a serial killer: 20-30 years old, organized and nonsocial, 80% male, pretty intelligent (Freeman 2). It should be clear that previous description is just the average pattern, and shouldn’t be treated like some absolute index. Considering that most of serial killers’ behaviors are featured like organized and nonsocial, these people do not different from properly socially adopted human beings. These people have pretty high level of IQ, often college educated, married or date someone, keep in touch the latest news etc. In this order, it is quite difficult to distinguish them from common crowd. Moreover, some stereotypes about serial killers are failed recently. For example, according to study conducted by scholars from University of Liverpool, there are four widely spread and wrong stereotypes about serial killers’ behavior: serial killers are dysfunctional loners, serial killers are only motivated by sex, serial killers are insane, serial killers want to get caught (University of Liverpool (Sociology School) 1). Regarding all above said, current achievements of sociology study does not allow to distinguish serial killers behavior into separate and independent investigative institution. Probably, this type of social deviation can be tracked through the motives and drivers of appropriate crimes committing?