A Criminological Synthesis of the Crime of Genocide
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61462/cujss.v50i2.704Keywords:
criminology, genocide, lawAbstract
The crime of genocide, or the “crime of all crimes”, is often analysed through the lens of law. However, social scientists have argued that legal explanations and descriptions of the crime of genocide are too limited in analysis. Criminology – as a sociological discipline dedicated to studying various crimes and to seeking explanations behind the roots of these crimes – can provide substantial guidance which could be employed to deconstruct, analyse and understand the crime of genocide. This article thus synthesizes criminological theories that have been employed to study the crime of genocide, to show how using the lens of criminology instead of law could improve our understanding about the crime of genocide. While there is no universally accepted criminological theory to unpack this crime, the studies do contribute greatly to our understanding of the causes and patterns of genocide. Findings from these studies show that the crime of genocide often originates from conflicts between “groups”, where the perpetrators believe that the victims caused problems. This, coupled with several factors, that motivate perpetrators to act collectively as a group, with macro-level motivations feeding into and spurring action at the micro-level, influencing a perpetrator's decision to commit the crime.
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