The Nature of Instrumentality and Expressiveness of Homicide Crime Scene Behaviors: A Review

Homicide offender typologies developed based on crime scene behaviors have practical utility for scholarly and criminal investigative endeavors. Hence, there has been an increasing interest to develop empirical and testable offender typologies. Specifically, the present study offers a review of the instrumental/expressive offender dichotomy, which is developed primarily based on the analysis of (nonsexual) homicide crime scene behaviors. The validity of the instrumental/expressive dichotomy of homicide offenders have been supported by various studies that sampled population from different countries. In addition, the extant literature indicates that the instrumental and expressive categories could further be expressed in different subthemes or dimensions. Implications for practice in the aspect of suspect prioritization as well as for research are discussed.