Over the past two decades, femicide—the gender-based killing of women or girls—has become an issue of international concern. Yet relatively little data on perpetrators exist. Current research primarily focuses on individual risk factors with less attention on community and societal factors. We use a social capital approach to examine femicide by analyzing the extent to which crime perpetrators experience and perceive social punishment (exclusion) from their social networks. Using a quota sampling strategy, we administered a cross-sectional questionnaire to perpetrators of femicide ( N = 71), male–male homicide ( N = 73), and other serious crimes ( N = 64) across four prisons in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Other crime perpetrators served as a control to the two lethal crime groups. Perceived social capital scores were assigned based on responses to two scales adapted from the World Bank’s “Integrated Questionnaire for the Measurement of Social Capital.” Before committing murder, femicide and homicide perpetrators’ scores were not statistically different. Yet after the crime, femicide perpetrators retained significantly greater scores than homicide perpetrators. The perceived social capital scores of other crime perpetrators did not change after the commission of their crimes. As a secondary objective, we examined the individual and social contexts of femicide perpetrators. Most (85%) of the femicide perpetrators could name at least one other person in their social network whom they knew to be physically violent during disagreements with their partner, while 11% stated that “everyone” they knew used violence during disagreements. Although the penalty for committing femicide and homicide is ostensibly equivalent—a life sentence of 50 years—we found that the informal social punishment femicide perpetrators perceived is less severe than that experienced by homicide perpetrators. These data indicate a lack of social punishment for femicide, compared to other crimes, showing social legitimization of the crime. These findings support the development of community-level interventions to prevent femicide.

中文翻译：

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杀戮女性、杀人和其他严重犯罪前后对社会资本的看法：来自阿根廷的证据


在过去的二十年中，杀害女性——基于性别的杀害妇女或女孩的行为——已成为国际关注的问题。然而，有关肇事者的数据相对较少。目前的研究主要集中于个人风险因素，较少关注社区和社会因素。我们使用社会资本方法通过分析犯罪者在其社交网络中经历和感知社会惩罚（排斥）的程度来研究杀害女性。我们采用配额抽样策略，对阿根廷布宜诺斯艾利斯四所监狱的杀害女性 (N = 71)、男性杀人 (N = 73) 和其他严重犯罪 (N = 64) 的犯罪者进行了横断面调查问卷。其他犯罪者充当了对两个致命犯罪团伙的控制。感知的社会资本分数是根据对世界银行“社会资本衡量综合问卷”改编的两个量表的回答来分配的。在实施谋杀之前，杀戮女性和杀人凶手的得分没有统计学差异。然而，犯罪发生后，杀戮女性犯罪者的得分明显高于杀人犯罪者。其他犯罪者的社会资本评分在犯罪后并没有改变。作为次要目标，我们研究了杀害女性犯罪者的个人和社会背景。大多数（85％）的杀害女性犯罪者可以在社交网络中至少说出一名他们知道在与伴侣发生分歧时使用暴力的人，而 11％ 的人表示他们认识的“每个人”在分歧期间都使用了暴力。 虽然杀害女性和杀人的刑罚表面上是相等的——50年无期徒刑——但我们发现，杀害女性犯罪者所感受到的非正式社会惩罚没有杀人犯罪者所经历的严厉。这些数据表明，与其他犯罪相比，杀害女性行为缺乏社会惩罚，这表明该犯罪的社会合法性。这些发现支持制定社区一级的干预措施以防止杀害女性。