Why are gang members not regarded as serial killers?
Posted Dec 30, 2018, 8:52 PM UTC
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They're not killing to fulfill a psychological need in themselves, they're killing for personal cause, financial gain, or under orders from others.
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While I agree gang member's likely shouldn't be classified as serial killers (even if they committed murders over a span of time), there are serials that commit murder for strictly financial gain. Psychological gratification (in the form of sexual release, power, domination, etc.) is common and probably applies to majority, it's not universal.
The requirements for serial murder is 3 or more murders with an emotional cooling off periods. The specifics of motivation are not central to the typology.
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My criminology text book, "Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives", the Crime Classification Manual, and the professor of my Criminology class (who was also a criminologist), disagree with your assessment entirely. Yes, three murders and a cooling off period of 24hrs or greater are part of the classification, but they're not the only necessary requirements. Motivation is a necessary and central part of the classification. Otherwise the category would be far too broad and could include a number of different types of murderers that are definitely not serial killers per se.
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Like I said, the majority of serial's have some kind of psychological satisfaction as motivation but it's not universal. There are enough exceptions, especially with female serials and to lesser extent males, who don't kill to fulfill psychological needs as primary motivation.
Again, I don't disagree that it's central for most offenders but to say it's necessary to be defined as a serial, is incorrect. It's not too broad or else you'd have spree or mass murderers labeled as such. Which they're not.
And finally lol, the FBI did a symposium with 135 experts in serial homicide to agree on aspects of serial killers. One being definition and they agreed to this: Serial Murder: The unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events
Personally, I think it should be at least 3 victims but whatever.
(https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murder/serial-murder-july-2008-pdf)
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The 2016 symposium carried on with the updated number of victims to 2, but that-- along with everything you just said-- is only the criteria the symposium agreed on to be used by the FBI to determine what they take into account when calling an UNSUB or suspect a "serial killer" in dealing with the media and the public. The criteria for using the term "serial killer" to describe a murderer has surprisingly little bearing on how criminologists classify a murderer as a serial killer, nor is it how the people who quite literally wrote the book on serial killers determined what consituted a serial killer when they coined the term. There are several chapters in my criminology texts that explain this in quite a bit of detail, (as did my professor, who I may have mentioned was a criminologist), and the Crime Classification Manual also includes victimology, crime scene indicators, staging, and forensic findings as defining characteristics of different types of murders and murderers. It also classifies "gang motivated murder" as its own unique category.
But by all means, please do continue to enlighten me on how I'm totally wrong and you're totally right. I only got that idea from criminology textbooks, a professional manual written by the person who coined the term "serial killer", and the explanation of an actual criminologist regarding the methods and criteria used by criminologists to classify a murderer as a serial killer. What could they possibly know?
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you've obviously never seen cartel execution videos. flaying people while they're still alive isn't business.
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If it makes the other cartels think twice about messing with you, then it is definitely business. That is all about sending a message.
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There's probably some overlap with people who torture & kill for cartels and people who enjoy power, control and inflicting pain, but it's still.. functional in a way that a serial killer killing people for their own reasons isn't.
The definitions are a bit muddled, but generally speaking, a serial killer kills to fulfil a need within themselves, as opposed to e.g. a hit man or a cartel torturer who kills on the orders of others or to achieve a goal other than self gratification.
I personally find that using serial killer as a term to describe someone who has killed multiple people to satisfy an abnormal psychological need with a noticeable cooling off period in between to be the most useful one, and that a meaningful distinction can be made between serial killers and for instance people who kill multiple people for gain of some sort, e.g. gang murders.
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but how do you know these gang members aren't satisfying an abnormal psychological need to kill through gang violence?
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As I said, there's probably some overlap with people who have serial killer tendencies and cartel enforcers, but at the end of the day cartel enforcers are still doing a "job". They're killing people to advance the goals of the cartel, and that's the defining feature. They aren't killing people based on their own preference, they're killing people the cartel wants them to kill. Would they be serial killers if they weren't members of a cartel? Possibly. Then again, there are plenty of people who have committed horrible atrocities at the behest of an ideology or an organisation or in an extreme situation who most probably wouldn't have become torturers and murderers if the situation had been different. Even many "normal" people are capable of horrible things in extreme circumstances.
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Richard Kuklinski, I think, satisfies the criteria you are getting at: an inherent serial killer who found professional and personal fulfillment through employment as a hit man! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kuklinski
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I've seen quite a bit more than you might think. And that's a power-play, but ultimately, yes, it is about business. If you aren't feared, there's another leader (or another cartel altogether) that's just waiting to take over. It all comes down to the need to be the scariest person in the business so you can continue to make money. The psychological drive of a serial killer is quite a bit different. It's also about a power dynamic in one sense, but it's far more complicated than just that.
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You act like its somehow stupid or uniformed to have not watched execution videos. Not everyone here is a sorry son of a bitch who doesnt give a fuck about someone being tortured, you vile cretin,
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calm down, sweetie.
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Id argue it is. To send a clear horrifying message that if you do not work with us or for us, or allow our behavior, you your family will be skinned alive. Look at the Zetas.
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Yes, I agree. many such gang members are likely sociopaths. That life is their comfort zone.
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flaying people while they're still alive isn't business.
Of course it is. They just come from a different cultural and social background than you. They're desensitized, not psychotic/sociopathic (in most cases).
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Neither are soldiers, different consept i think.
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Gang/mob members generally kill for revenge and financial gain.
Soldiers (that see combat) kill to defend their territory and themselves from attackers and so on depending on the specific situation.
Serial killers typically kill to fulfill an internal or psychological need (like sexual need and desire) or even revenge.
Spree killers are interesting because it's usually them killing to cover up for a different crime (witnesses) or they're on a rampage (think of Bonnie and Clyde, or the No Country for Old Men guy).
Same for shooters, although for them it's usually revenge.
Terrorists kill to incite war, topple or disrupt governments or organizations, etc.
TL;DR Categorization based on motive. Not sure if I would include soldiers in this anyway.
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Concept*
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Thanks. First grammatical error corrected in reddit. English isn't my native language so pretty good i guess to make it this far.
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it’s fine - it’s a simple misspelling or typo that is easily understood, and your english is great!
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Thank you!
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Quick google search found this: www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201705/what-defines-serial-killer%3famp
Technically, they are, but we don't call them that because of different motivations for the murders/lack of psychological abnormality.
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There isn't a lack of psychological abnormality, just a different form. They're sociopaths with financial motivation instead of psycho-sexual motivations.
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So I come from NI, which has never had a serial killer. We did, however, have a terrorist gang known as the Shankill Butchers, who used the cover of the troubles to carry out awful, awful murders. They were arguably serial killers as there is every evidence they carried out the killings because they simply enjoyed killing, but they aren't recorded as such because they had an ostensibly political motivation. Serial killers murder for different reasons - a good book on the subject is Mindhunter, which is also a cracking netflix show.
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Shankill may refer to various places in Ireland:
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Thanks for your insight, but I'm sitting about 20 miles away from the Shankill Road, whence the Butchers took their name. It's not a part of Ireland, that's kind of the problem.
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There isn’t pleasure in it for them *most of the time. For gang members, it’s about their gain of respect, money, or other things. They don’t fantasize about killing; they fantasize about being the kingpin.
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they fantasize about being the kingpin.
Or just surviving
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Most American gang members have probably never killed anyone.
It's all arbitrary and political.
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Interesting question. I'm not really sure how multiple murders by gangs are categorized. I imagine it depends on the individual murder(s) and the individuals involved. I can see where it would be difficult to categorize a number of gang murders to either serial killings or mass murders.
I would say gang murders don't always follow a specific pattern (compete with a modus operandi) ... so not really serial killer behavior. Neither are the murders accomplished at relatively the same place and time ... so not mass murders (although a particular set of murders might be classified as such if the number of fatalities were more than a set amount.
It's a conundrum. I hope you get a better answer.
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Gangs are violent but most members haven’t killed anyone let alone several people.
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Because most gang members haven't killed anyone
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Gangs have initiation rites. One such rite is killing a random person in cold blood.
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I am in no way a gang apologist but this is something that sounds more like an urban legend than something sourcable... do you have a source on this?
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Our small town had several murders, and several drive by, random shootings. The local law enforcement was completely overwhelmed. The FBI was called in, and a town hall type meeting was convened. In the meeting an FBI agent told us that the recent drive by shootings were very probably gang initiation related. She also gave us a lot of info about the gangs that had arrived in our community. This was about 8 years ago, when it began. Only one murder was actually solved, and it did turn out to be gang related. I think some of the shootings were drug related, but some were not. In the intervening years most people in the town became up to speed on gang activity most of us had never experienced that type of crime before. Sad situation.
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yea THAT happened for sure
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For the same reason that soldiers aren't labelled serial killers.
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Gangs have shooters who aren't killers but could step up once the current lineup of killers are murdered or sent to jail/prison. Killers/hittas/drillas are not in the majority and usually don't last very long. Live by the gun, die by the gun.
Your opps are the metaphorical equivalent to Osama Bin Laden. It's kill or be killed and when someone on your side gets killed, vengeance will definitely be had. It's war on a very small scale.
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Group vs. individual. You can't stop a rogue cop the same way, as you do an entire municipal department that is corrupt.
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Killers are catalogued differently based on method and motive.
Which is why spree killers, serial killers, contract killers, etc. are kept separately, and why serial killers are often separated into groups.