Criminology Research for Serial Killer Aileen Wuornos

 

Introduction

Criminology is the study of crime from a social viewpoint and includes who committed the crime, and why they committed the crime. It also includes studying the impact they have and how they could be prevented. The main aim of criminology is to determine the root cause of criminal behavior and generate efficient ways and theories to prevent it. Aileen Wuornos was an American serial killer and a prostitute who killed seven men in Florida. She was eventually convicted and placed on death row. Criminology research on Aileen Wuornos will enlighten us on why she committed crime and theories that could be used to explain her behavior.

Background Information

Wuornos was born on 29th February 1956 in Rochester Michigan. She had a horrifying experience during her childhood. Her father killed himself while in prison serving for child molestation and her mother abandoned her and her older brother. They were both raised by their grandparents of which her grandmother was alleged to be an alcoholic and her grandfather was a violent person. Wuornos was sexually abused by her grandfather and had sexual relations with her brother. In her early teens, she became pregnant and gave birth to a boy who was given up for adoption. In her adolescent years, she was thrown out of her home and had to live in the woods (Biography.com Editors 2017). As an adult, she began existing as a vagabond and engaged in sex for survival. In the mid-1970s, Wuornos was arrested for assault and disorderly conduct. She later settled in Florida where she met a rich yachtsman called Lewis fell and they got married. Shortly after, Lewis annulled the union when Wuornos was arrested in another confrontation.

Later on, after being involved in numerous crimes, she met Tyria Moore where they engaged themselves in a romantic relationship. In late 1989 into the fall of 1990, it was revealed that Wuornos had killed at least six men along Florida highways. In 1989, Richard Mallory’s body was found in a junkyard, and five other men's bodies were discovered over the following months. Wuornos and Moore were eventually tracked down where Wuornos was arrested in a bar in Port Orange in Florida and Moore in Pennsylvania. For Moore not to be prosecuted, she made a deal and prompted a phone confession from Wuornos who agreed to have committed the murders (Biography.com Editors 2017). During her trial, Wuornos said that Mallory had raped and assaulted her and therefore killed him in self-defense. She also maintained that killing the other five men was in self-defense as well, though she later retracted these statements. The jury found Wuornos guilty of first-degree murder on Mallory’s case and was given the death penalty. In the following months, she pleaded guilty to the other five murders and was charged with a death sentence for each plea. She later admitted to having killed Siems whose body was never recovered. After spending a decade on death row, Wuornos fired her lawyers who were working for a stay of execution. After being seen to be mentally competent on the death penalty and why it was implemented, she was executed by lethal injection in 2002.

Criminological theories that explain the offender’s behavior

Strain theory is an approach that states that certain stressors increase the likelihood of a person committing a crime. These strains include the incapability of accomplishing goals such as financial goals, the loss of positive incentives such as the loss of valued goods or the death of a close person, and the exhibition of negative incentives such as physical or vocal abuse. People who go through these stressors are easily upset turning to crime for them to get by. They use crime as a way of running away from the stressors. Though not everyone experiencing these strains will use crime as a scapegoat, some end up cutting on their expenses or run away from whichever place they are being abused. People experiencing strain may develop negative emotions such as anger, resentment, and depression.  These negative emotions demand coping reactions to ease the burden. Coping through illegitimate actions and violence happens for adolescents due to their limited legitimate coping means (Agnew 2012). They also are not able to escape stressful and frustrating environments. Wuornos’ grandfather was abusive and this is a strain that she could be going through and led her to commit the crime. Her grandmother was an alcoholic meaning that she had no one to talk to and this added to her strains. Her reason for committing murder could have been a result of an adaptation to a coping mechanism. When she was thrown out of her home, she engaged in sex for survival and committed the crime because she had limited legitimate coping resources.

Psychological theory is an approach that suggests that crime is shaped by an individual’s childhood experience. This theory focuses on the association between intelligence, personality, learning, and criminal behavior (Sikand & Reddy 2017). This approach claims that all criminal behavior is learned and the learning process is impacted by the extent to which the individual has contact with people who commit crimes. An individual’s personality is controlled by unconscious mental processes that are grounded in early childhood.  Criminal offenders are frustrated and are constantly drawn to past events that happened in their early childhood. Wuornos had a very bad experience in her childhood, from her father molesting a child, being arrested and killing himself and the mother throwing them out to live with their grandmother who was an alcoholic, and grandfather who was violent. Being surrounded by all these people and considering the events that occurred in her childhood, could have contributed largely to her becoming a serial killer. Being abused by her grandfather, having relations with her brother, giving her child for adoption just explains the events in her life that could cause her frustration and later commit the crimes.

Criminological theories that do not explain the offender’s behavior

Routine activities theory is an approach that suggests that the organization of routine activities in society creates opportunities for crime. The daily routine of activities that people engage in, inclusive of where they work, the routes they take, the groups they socialize with, where they shop, are a strong influence on when, where, and to whom crime occurs (Miró-Llinares 2014). These routines can make crime easy and low risk or difficult and risky. Opportunities vary among people, over time and so does the likelihood of crime. Wuornos did not have a daily routine of activities that she engaged in and so this theory cannot be used to explain her behavior. At some point, she even got married to a wealthy man and still committed crimes.

Social Reaction theory which is also known as the labeling theory focuses on the linguistic tendency of a majority group negatively labeling a minority group (Grattet, Ryken. 2011). It is concerned with how self-identity and behavior of people may be influenced by the terms used to describe them. When a person commits a crime, they will receive the label of a criminal. When society labels a person as a criminal, they are bound to accept it as part of themselves. And when the person thinks or believes them as a criminal, they are more likely to continue with their criminal behavior. This theory cannot explain Wuornos's behavior because apart from committing crimes, she sometimes got attached to relationships and lived her life before she went back to committing crimes. This means that even if she was labeled as a criminal, it did not influence her into committing crimes.

Scholarly articles supporting each theory

Strain theory

Strain theory from this article brings the argument that crime is not caused so much by not being able to achieve positively valued goals but by the inability to escape from painful situations. This argument is relevant in explaining delinquency because juveniles are obliged to live with their family in a particular neighborhood, attend a certain school interact with the same people in school and at home (Agnew 2012). There is little or nothing that the juveniles can do to legally escape if abused or mistreated in these settings. This makes them engage in crime to escape from such treatment. The research done involved data from a national sample of adolescent boys and the outcome showed that delinquency is more among those that are subject to harsh and unfair treatment by guardians and teachers.

Psychological Theory

The study in this article focuses on reviewing the literature to determine the role of psychological factors in the tendency towards engaging in such behavior which includes character, psychiatric situations, intellect, emotional style, and self-control (Sikand & Reddy 2017). According to the research criminal behavior is the result of an association between certain environmental conditions and features of the nervous system. People who engage in criminal behavior are influenced by environmental, neurobiological, and personality factors. The study conducted included 54 detained offenders who had a mental disorder and found out that high neuroticism, low sociability, and little agreeableness were associated with criminal behavior.

Conclusion

Theories that explain why Wuornos engaged in criminal behavior include psychological and strain theories. The psychological theory focuses on the association between intelligence, character, learning, and criminal behavior. Strain theories maintain that an individual particular stressors can cause them to commit a crime. Routine activities and social reaction theory are approaches that do not explain the criminal behavior of Wuornos. Routine activities suggest that an individual’s daily activities create opportunities for crime. Social reaction theories focus on the labeling of an individual as a criminal and the individual believing that they truly are. Strain theory explains Wuornos's criminal behavior because as a young person and having to go through abuse, abandonment by her mother, an alcoholic grandmother, and difficult childhood, as the theory explains, she was escaping from all these stressors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

Agnew R. (2012) Reflection on “A Revised Strain Theory of Delinquency”, Social Forces,

Volume 91, Issue Pages 33–38, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sos117

Biography.com Editors (2017) Aileen Wuornos Biography. Retrieved from

https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/aileen-wuornos

Miró-Llinares, Fernando. (2014). Routine Activity Theory. 10.1002/9781118517390/wbetc198.

Grattet, Ryken. (2011). Societal Reactions to Deviance. Annual Review of Sociology. 37.

10.1146/annurev-soc-081309-150012.

Sikand M, Reddy J.K (2017) Psychological Underpinnings of Criminal Behaviour. Forensic Res

Criminol Int J 5(3): 00157. DOI: 10.15406/frcij.2017.05.00157