Observatory on Couple and Family Crimes (1 January-30 April) 2003

According to Criminalpol data, 257 homicides were recorded between May and August 2003, 21.8% more than in the previous four-month period. In addition, the number of homicides within the couple and family/parental relationships monitored by Eurispes also increased: from 49 to 55, with a growth rate of 12% compared to the previous four-month period.

Out of the total number of homicides reported by the Criminalpol, the incidence of homicides committed by husbands, wives, partners, boyfriends, children, fathers, mothers and other relatives, recorded by our Observatory, was 21%. Thus, confirming the trend already identified in the last four-month period, from the beginning of May to the end of August, a couple or family/parental crime was committed every two days. However, the picture of violence in couples and families would not be complete if we did not also mention the exceptionally high number of attempted murders in the four-month period under review: 23, of which 10 were committed by couples and 13 by relatives.

Therefore, family and relationship crimes are a phenomenon that is increasingly attracting the attention of public opinion. But, above all, one wonders why a healthy society such as ours produces cases of daily horror in the family, within the domestic walls that symbolically enclose the places of safety and protection. Indeed, the effect of these crimes is multiplied by the media, which give particular prominence – suggesting a constant growth – to those episodes that turn out to be the most striking for their cruelty, for the type of relationship existing between victim and perpetrator and, ultimately, for the degree of what we could call the acute symptom of a compromised ordinariness.