Your job in this activity board is to summarize the Petee et al. (1997) reading and its application and assessment in four parts.
Part 1: Present the 3 most frequent motivation categories that Petee and colleagues (1997) found using their own typology. Make sure to name and describe each one. p.s. Look at a table to figure out which ones are most frequent.
Part 2: Present the distribution of 2 offender and offense characteristics across the typology. More specifically, present what the authors say about at least 2 of the 5 eligible characteristics listed in Table 2 on p. 330 (% white, number killed, number wounded, % attempting suicide and percentage involving acquaintance target–do not discuss age because I give it as an example below).
It’s important to get this right. The common way to explain a characteristic’s distribution is to say, for example, the following about age:
“Mass murderers averaged different ages by typological category. The mass murderers who committed felony related mass murderers, on average, tended to be young (19.5 years) while the mass murders who killed in the course of relationships (anger/revenge: specific person, domestic/romantic related and direct interpersonal conflict) tended to be the oldest of all the mass murder categories (37.88, 36.33 & 36.4, respectively). The average ages in the remaining Peter categories ranged from the late 20s to mid-30s.”
Why is describing the distribution of characteristics across categories important? Any trends in the distributions demonstrate the effectiveness of typologies–that the offenders are so systematically different in that characteristic that breaking them up into patterned groups makes sense!
Part 3: Apply the Petee and colleagues (1997) typology to Pekka-Eric Auvinen using his manifesto (copy included in this assignment). (1) What type of mass murderer is Pekka in your opinion and why–give your reasoning here? (2) Look back at characteristics listed on Table 2 of the Petee reading and, as best as you can tell, does Auvinen fit the Petee category you chose? Why or why not?
Let me give an example of how to apply the 6 characteristics. I won’t use Auvinen here–I’ll pick Whitman. I declare him to be a anger/revenge:diffuse target offender. Assume I have already made an argument that Whitman is a diffuse offender based on his letters, psychiatric notes and history. Now I am applying the 6 characteristics to him. I could say:
“While I claim that Whitman is a diffuse offender, he certainly is not an average one when looking specifically at the 6 characteristics presented by Petee in Table 2 (p. 330). While Whitman was white and killed people known to him (mother and wife), he was also much younger than the average diffuse offender (25 v. 32 years) . He also killed and wounded many more people than the average diffuse offender (17 killed & 31 wounded v. 4 & 1.14, respectively).” …
Part 4: Assess the usefulness of the Petee and colleagues (1997) typology. It is mandatory to in your answer to describe what are typologies and their purpose (see the lecture for this info). Given what you say about how they are supposed to be useful, is the Petee typology meeting that description of usefulness? Feel free to argue they are useful or not useful. Regardless of what you argue, make sure to explain the reasoning behind your opinion
Sample Solution
