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This chapter presents the history of DER, considering Aquinas’s originating account and closely tracing the development of double effect through subsequent moralists up to the 19th century Jesuit J.P. Gury, who proposed the standard modern version. Over the six centuries separating Aquinas and Gury, ethicists expanded the number of cases considered by DER and further articulated its grounds in action theory, arriving at double-effect criteria as generally applicable to relevant cases. These criteria, their import, order, relation to one another, necessity, and sufficiency are analyzed, and revisions are proposed.

In the Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas develops Augustine's anthropology with the help of the rediscovered metaphysics of Aristotle. Thomas comes to stress that the power of understanding of the ‘separated soul’ is very weak. Death is natural as regards matter (the destructible body) but not as regards form (the indestructible soul). Death in itself is always a bad thing and it is only incidentally (per accidens) that death is, for some, the beginning of heavenly bliss. Thus, homicide and suicide can be seen to be wrong because, in themselves, they are acts of destruction.

This chapter discusses family liaison, which is a core policing function, although for many years it has been generally confined to homicide investigations. Family Liaison Officers (FLOs) are tasked to elicit information from a shocked and traumatized family in an emphatic and compassionate way. They also provide investigative expertise and support to families.

By 1980, the violence rate had reached its highest level in memory, including a modern record of more than 23,000 homicides. The victor in the presidential race that year, Ronald Reagan, was surrounded by key supporters and advisers who wanted to make crime a high administration priority. The administration named a violent crime task force that called in August 1981 for a stronger federal role and changes in the law to favor the prosecution side. Three years later, a coalition of Republicans and moderate Democrats used a parliamentary maneuver to enact the most far‐ranging federal anticrime law in 16 years. Key players in pushing the anticrime agenda included Republicans like Edwin Meese, a longtime Reagan aide who later became Attorney General; Representative Dan Lungren of California, and prosecutor/crime victims advocate Lois Herrington; on the Democratic side were Senators Joseph Biden of Delaware and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Representative William Hughes of New Jersey. An important provision of the law was a requirement that “sentencing guidelines” restrict federal judges’ power to set penalties in criminal cases. Others created a federal fund to support programs that aided crime victims and set up a “forfeiture” procedure by which law enforcers could seize the assets of suspects and convicts.

This chapter presents a new theory of homicide — homicide adaptation theory — which proposes that humans evolved adaptations to facilitate killing. The new theory is contrasted with two competing conceptions of why people kill: the by-product hypothesis and the evolved goal hypothesis. The concept of ‘innateness’ in relation to the conception of evolved homicide adaptations presented in this chapter is discussed.

This chapter discusses historical developments in the law of offences against the person. These are considered in three distinct groupings: (1) non-fatal assaults and wounding; (2) sexual offences; and (3) unlawful homicide.

This chapter tries to identify whether and under what conditions strict liability in the penal law is morally objectionable or unobjectionable. It argues that liability without fault for one or more material elements often is worrisome because it results in disproportionate punishments: punishments in excess of the desert of the offender. This position is illustrated by an extended critical discussion of the strict liability drug homicide statutes that have been enacted in New Jersey as well as in other jurisdictions throughout the United States.

This explores the compositional logic involved in creating the laws on homicide (Exodus 21:12–14), injury/assault (vv. 18–19), slave homicide (vv. 20–21), aggravated miscarriage (abortion; vv. 22–23), talion ("an eye for and eye," etc.; vv. 23b-25), and slave injury (vv. 26–27). It demonstrates that all of these laws are a unity based on sources in the Laws of Hammurabi. It also shows that the talion law is integrally connected to the legislation on homicide and injury, giving the requirement that one must indemnify a victim or their kin, even if the injury or homicide was accidental. The Covenant Code thus identifies and solve problems in the homicide and injury laws of its source.

The upsurge in interest in assisted dying has occurred against a backdrop of growing concern over the modern reality of dying. Important terms must be defined including euthanasia (voluntary, non-voluntary, and involuntary); assisted suicide; assisted dying; and other medical behaviour that (potentially) shortens life. The current legal position in most major Western jurisdictions is relatively consistent. Most common law and some civil law jurisdictions treat termination of life on request or voluntary active euthanasia as murder. Some civil law jurisdictions have a separate, lesser offence of consensual homicide or termination of life on request, and others have a separate offence of compassionate homicide. Most jurisdictions have criminal prohibitions on assisted suicide, although a minority restrict the scope of criminalization of assistance in suicide based on the assister's motive. In jurisdicitions without a prohibition on assisting suicide, other offences may be used to effectively criminalize such behaviour.

This chapter demonstrates that Demosthenes uses religion in a different way when he writes for delivery by other speakers. Of the three speeches on illegal proposals, in Against Aristocrates the Athenian rules on homicide procedures are characterized as in compliance with religious requirements and the opposite is accordingly accused of undermining these rules and exposing the city to pollution. Androtion is likewise accused of religious misconduct in the speeches against himself and Against Timocrates. In contrast to the speeches discussed in Chapters 1–3, the attacks made in Demosthenes' logographic speeches rely on their religious nature.

This chapter summarizes European research that covers the various topic areas included in this book. It starts with an overview of European longitudinal studies, which have been conducted far beyond the small number of countries that are routinely included in international reviews of research. The chapter also gives an overview of transnational European crime victimization surveys and comparative research on self-reported juvenile delinquency. European countries differ substantially with respect to the volume, trends, and explanations of criminal victimization, violence against women, juvenile delinquency, and homicide. Among the factors routinely addressed is the nexus between migration and crime where Europe’s and America’s experiences differ in many respects. With respect to responses to offending, Europe has a long history of favouring therapeutic rather than punitive approaches, although evaluations often are unsatisfactory or entirely missing. Europe’s remarkably varying crime and incarceration rates, which are well-documented, allow us to asses to what extent prison populations are driven by crime rates or the length of sentences. The findings suggest that both variables play an important role and that especially the rate of inmates convicted of murder strongly affects a country’s prison population. The chapter concludes with a short discussion of the impact on crime of alcohol, drug and welfare policies.

This chapter shows how biblical law distinguishes between premeditated, spur of the moment, and accidental homicide, and thus tries to strike a particular balance between harm and culpability. Central to this is the operation of the biblical laws of asylum, either at a divinely-approved altar or at a city of refuge. Biblical law takes seriously the value of human life—both the value of the victim's life and the need to protect the life of the offender, in certain circumstances. This is consistent with the limits that are set to blood vengeance and to other forms of vengeance, as expressed in the lex talionis. This is concerned with both quantitative and qualitative proportionality. The discussion includes some key biblical narratives, including the story of Cain and Abel.

This chapter examines drug dealing and gang membership, and to a lesser extent sex offending and homicide, with respect to age of onset and desistance, correlates and causes, and offense specialization and persistence during the transition from adolescence into young adulthood. Prior studies and research indicate that initiation of criminal activity is not rigidly fixed in enduring biological or developmental processes, but is contingent on crime type, time period, and perhaps other features of social context. Although most criminal offending begins in adolescence, the chapter finds some evidence of initiation of serious violence and drug dealing in early adulthood, whereas gang membership almost always begins during adolescence. The chapter's analyses also indicate comparatively strong persistence from adolescence into young adulthood of drug dealing and gun carrying, less persistence in serious violence and theft, and little persistence in gang involvement. In general, the evidence suggests that special types of offenders do not tend to specialize in a single offense type to the exclusion of others, although prior research does indicate somewhat greater specialization among sex offenders who victimize children than those who victimize peers or adults. Additional research is needed to formulate effective interventions for these special offenders.