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Developing a Revised Typology of Child Homicide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2015

Dean Biron  and
Danielle Reynald
Dean Biron*
Affiliation:
School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
Danielle Reynald
Affiliation:
School of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
*
address for correspondence: Dean Biron PhD, School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology, Phone No. 07 3735 1145. E-mail [email protected].
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Abstract

The problem of child homicide continues to be of major concern to researchers, policy makers and child welfare advocates everywhere. In particular, there is debate around the fundamental issues of defining and classifying such deaths. Here, a revised typology of child homicide is developed, by way of an update of the categories of fatal assault first delineated in Lawrence (2004). Taking into consideration significant advances in the field over the past decade, the typology is based primarily upon the developmental stages of the child, with the concept of homicide as the extreme manifestation of aggregate violence and maltreatment also central. The problem is further placed into the context of (1) child death research and review, it being argued that child homicide should ideally be studied as a sub-set of the entire cohort of child deaths for a particular jurisdiction, and (2) child maltreatment generally, in that wherever practicable child homicide research should consider fatalities in conjunction with other serious or near-fatal cases of abuse and neglect.

Keywords

Child abuseChild neglectChild protectionTrauma
Type
Articles
Information
Children Australia , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 2016 , pp. 8 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2015 

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