Differentiating Male and Female Intimate Partner Homicide Perpetrators: A Study of Social, Criminological and Clinical Factors

It is recognized that the majority of intimate partner homicide (IPH) victims are female; simultaneously, when females do commit homicide, they are more likely to perpetrate against an intimate partner. To date, there are only a few studies that discuss IPH across gender, leading to a gap of knowledge with regard to gender aspects of perpetration. The present nationwide study has a retrospective design, based on registries of all female (n = 9) and stratified male (n = 36) IPH committed in Sweden between 2007 and 2009. Our study suggests that female perpetrators are more likely to be unemployed, to have suffered from a substance abuse disorder at some point in life and to have been victimized by the victim. In other words, scrutiny of these characteristics reveals that females who commit partner-related homicides are qualitatively and clinically different from their male counterparts. Furthermore, the prevailing feature of intoxication in connection to the crime, both in male and female perpetrators, indicates that perpetrators might benefit from elements of substance abuse treatment in interventions targeting partner violence.