Individual Features of Violent Crime Offenders Regarding Offender’s Sex

Abstract

Given the fact that in today's world are more and more different types of violence, this paper deals with individual features of violent crime offenders. The results presented in this paper are part of the scientific research project entitled Croatian Violence Monitor – A Study of the Phenomenology, Etiology, and Prosecution of Delinquent Violence with a Focus on Protecting Particularly Vulnerable Groups of Victims. Secondary data sources were used for the research sample, namely collected court cases of violent crimes committed on the territory of the Republic of Croatia. The objective of the paper was to obtain better insight into certain individual features of violent crime offenders regarding the relationship between the offender and the victim, the offender's marital status at the time of the crime, the offender's parenthood, the offender's disability, the risk of belonging to a particular group, the offender's monthly income, the offender's level of education and the offender's employment at the time of the crime. The specific objective of the paper was to establish the differences in analyzed features considering the offender’s sex. From the point of view of practice, this paper provides certain feedback to experts from various professions who deal with the issue of violence. The analyzed data showed that most offenders of both sexes completed secondary school lasting up to three years (male sex - 65%; female sex - 54.4%), so these data are extremely important for experts in the educational system in terms of prevention of future acts of violence through additional education of students on the harmfulness and consequences of violence.