Data Quality and Violence Against Women: The Causes and Actors of Femicide

The paper examines domestic ’femicide’ in Italy. Under an exploratory statistical approach, we investigated: (1) difficulties and strategies for reconstructing a historical dataset on fam- ily crimes for studies over time; (2) the main causes of family femicides; and (3) groups of actors driven by the same motivations interpreted as patterns of criminal behavior. First, we integrated and systematised data from official sources to guarantee comparison over time; second, we used Social Network Analysis properties to study the relationships between ’motivations’ and ’victim-perpetrator’; and third, we applied and compared com- munity detection algorithms to the linkages between ’actors’ and ’motivations’ to detect groups of criminal behavior. From 2015 to 2020 in Italy, the cohabitant was the major fam- ily murderer, but in 2020, passion motivation also surfaced. Mental problems connected to parents-children and cohabitants, jealousy of ex-partners or rivals, and economic issues for blood relations were observed in 2015. Psychopathologies and money characterised par- ents-children in 2020, while passion and disagreements caused cohabitants or ex-partners.