Matricide in Ghana: Victims, Offenders, and Offense Characteristics

Abstract

At present, scholarship on matricide across many regions of the non-Western world is lacking. For instance, in Ghana, despite the intermittent, yet recurrent, availability of media reports describing matricidal acts over the past quarter century, no existing study has systematically analyzed matricidal killings in the West African nation. To contribute to the literature and extend knowledge about matricide and other forms of lethal violence in Ghana, this article presents the results of an analysis of 21 matricidal acts that occurred in Ghana from 1990 to 2016. Issues studied include demographic characteristics of assailants and victims, modus operandi, temporal and spatial aspects, as well as the motives and circumstances surrounding the crime. The results show that sons were substantially more likely than daughters to kill their mothers, matricide offenders were more likely to suffer from serious psychiatric disorders, matricide offenses generally occurred in the victim's home, and all cases of matricide were characterized by massive physical force and extreme violence. Matricide offenses in Ghana differed from matricides in Western nations in four important respects: (a) none of the 21 matricides was perpetrated with a firearm, (b) in none of the cases did the offender act with a co-offender (accomplice or accessory),

Vigilantism in Ghana: Trends, Victim Characteristics, and Reported Reasons

“…The study draws on online media reports on vigilantism from the period 2001 to 2018. The study approach was, thus, modelled after the method used in recent studies on some social and criminal issues in Ghana, for example, matricides, gang rape, suicide, and incest, inter alia (for example, (Adinkrah 2014, 2018; Quarshie et al . 2017, 2018).…”

The typology of parricide and the role of mental illness: Data‐driven approach

“…Heide (2017) also points out that evidence of mental illness can be found in all types of parricide offenders (such as depression in severely abused and psychopathy in dangerously antisocial offenders), but that it can only be considered a direct reason for homicide in the severely mentally ill offender type. Indeed, international research has shown schizophrenia and delusional disorders to be the most common mental health diagnoses in parricide offenders followed by adjustment disorder and personality disorder (antisocial and borderline; Adinkrah, 2017, 2018; De Borba‐Telles et al, 2017; Lennings, 2003; Raymond, Léger, & Lachaux, 2015; Sahin et al, 2016). Even though often used, Heide's typology has not yet been, according to the authors’ knowledge, examined using a data‐driven bottom‐up approach.…”

Multiple‐victim parricides in South Africa, 1990–2019

“…The use of newspapers to study murder has been an accepted methodology, especially in countries where there are no national criminal justice databases (Adinkrah, 2014(Adinkrah, , 2017(Adinkrah, , 2018 or during historical periods where newspapers constituted the most accessible centralised repository of information about crime in a community (Sharpe, 2012).…”

“…Cases were retrieved by searching the phrases “murder,” “family murder” and “parricide.” This type of methodology has been successfully used by a number of previous researchers (Adinkrah, 2017; Boots & Heide, 2006; Fegadel & Heide, 2017; Govender, 2015). The use of newspapers to study murder has been an accepted methodology, especially in countries where there are no national criminal justice databases (Adinkrah, 2014, 2017, 2018) or during historical periods where newspapers constituted the most accessible centralised repository of information about crime in a community (Sharpe, 2012). Due to the violent nature of the act, family‐related murders often receive extensive media coverage (Adinkrah, 2014; Liem & Reichelmann, 2014); it was therefore possible to identify family‐related murders using this open source methodology (Parkin & Gruenewald, 2015).…”

“…Although atypical homicides such as serial and mass murder have been the objects of enquiry in South Africa, mass killings that occur in the context of parricides have not been analysed. While parricides in African contexts have been reported, they did not analyse mass murder incidents or make the variables related to their dynamics analytically relevant, focusing the analysis on single victim and single offender incidents (Adinkrah, 2017(Adinkrah, , 2018Menezes, 2010). It remains unknown how parricides turn into multiple victim homicide incidents within the family.…”