Child homicide and Infanticide in New Zealand

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2003.03.001Get rights and content

Introduction

Mothers across species have always killed their infants. As Mr. Leo Abse introduced his Infanticide Bill he stated, “Nineteenth century juries…knew that at about the time of birth, dogs, cats, sows, white mice, rabbits—all of them—sometimes killed their young. They were not prepared to extend less compassion to a mentally sick woman than they would to an excitable bitch” (quoted in: Evans, 1968).

Nonaccidental violence towards children has been ubiquitous throughout history. In primitive times, motivation and method was generally abandonment. With successive stages of civilisation's development, motivation and methods of injury and murder of children have diversified. Motivations include economic, politics, ideology, war, education, insanity, and religion (Bloch, 1988). There is an underlying implication in society that children are property to be disposed of by their parent “owners” (Evans, 1968). Some argue that the infant has held a lower status in society and this is reflected in British and New Zealand laws on infanticide, with lesser penalties than those for homicide, and establishing liberal insanity defences. (Damme, 1978). However, when men kill their children, there is no pattern of ambivalence or mercy in terms of the punishment they receive, which argues against the lower status of the infant (Oberman, 1996).

Infant homicides have been classified by Resnick (1969) and then by D'Orban (1979) into six categories: “accidental” filicide or battering mothers; “acutely psychotic” filicide or mentally ill mothers; neonaticides; “spouse revenge” filicide or retaliating women; “unwanted child” filicide; and “altruistic” filicide or mercy killing.

New Zealand has specific provisions for infanticide that are substantially different from those in other jurisdictions. There have been no specific studies in the literature examining whether these provisions have led to different outcomes for women who have killed their children. The purpose of this study is to attempt to describe the epidemiology of child homicide in New Zealand and the practical use of infanticide provisions resulting from the different legislation.

Section snippets

Historical basis for infanticide provisions (law in England and Wales)

Ancient civilisations viewed children as omens of good and evil, with abandonment, infanticide, and filicide being commonplace. To appease the gods, children were often used in ritual sacrifice. For example, in Egypt, children were entombed with their dead parents to provide comfort and companionship. The Chinese and Japanese disposed of female infants by drowning, due to their economic burden. In ancient Jericho (300 BC) to modern Germany (1843), children were immured in the foundations of new

Rates of infant and child homicide

The annual rate of infant homicide (defined as homicide of a child under the age of 1) is reported as being 45 per million in England and Wales (Marks & Kumar, 1993), 43 per million in Scotland (Marks & Kumar, 1996), and 43 (in 1976–1979) to 88 (in 1991) per million in the United States Jason et al., 1983, Overpeck et al., 1998, a parent being the most likely perpetrator. In England and Wales, the mother committed all neonaticides, and most of these were convicted of infanticide and received

New Zealand law

The law for infanticide in New Zealand is significantly different from that of other jurisdictions that have infanticide as a statutory offence. The current legislation is over 40 years old, dating from the Crimes Act 1961. Section 178(1) of the Crimes Act 1961 (New Zealand Government 1961) states:

Where a woman causes the death of any child of hers under the age of 10 years in a manner that amounts to culpable homicide, and where at the time of the offence the balance of her mind was disturbed,

Infanticide in New Zealand compared to other jurisdictions

The New Zealand legislation differs from other infanticide acts in, for example, England, Australia, and Canada, in that it does not limit the time following childbirth to 12 months, possibly up to 10 years, and can include children other than the child that has been born most recently. It specifies that the mens rea of the act causing death must otherwise be sufficient for murder or manslaughter. It would appear to require a causal relationship between the offence and the mental disturbance,

Method

Figures were obtained from New Zealand Police records kept of child homicide in New Zealand from 1990 to 1999. The information contained the age of the victim, the relationship of the perpetrator to the victim, the mode of death, and the year of offence. New Zealand Ministry of Justice provided further information on successful prosecutions with an outcome of infanticide. This included the year of offence and the sentence received. Successful prosecution information included those women found

Results

In the 10 years 1990–1999, there were 87 homicides of children under the age of 14 years. Of these, 25 were aged under 1 year, of which 1 was “unborn” and 1 “new born”. The number of births in New Zealand in the year July 1995 to June 1996 was 57,082. This gives an average annual homicide rate of approximately 10 per million for children under 14 years and 45 per million for infant homicide. The annual homicide rate for the general population in New Zealand over the same period was

Discussion

The annual homicide rates in New Zealand are remarkably consistent with those in England and Wales and Scotland. The infant homicide rate is 45 per million compared to 43 in Scotland and 45 in England and Wales. The rates in these countries have been very consistent over time, and similar to that in the United States in the 1970s. It remains to be seen whether these countries will follow the pattern of the United States, with a doubling of the infant homicide rate over the 1980s. This rate is

Acknowledgements

Harry Quinn, Detective Inspector, National investigation bureau.

Philip Spier, Senior Research Adviser, Research and Evaluation Unit, Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Group, Ministry of Justice.

First page preview

First page preview
Click to open first page preview

References (26)

  • A.A Bartholomew et al.

    Infanticide: A statutory offence

    The Medical Journal of Australia

    (1965)
  • H Bloch

    Abandonment, infanticide, and filicide: An overview of inhumanity to children

    American Journal of Disease in Childhood

    (1988)
  • R Bluglass

    Infanticide and filicide

  • C Damme

    Infanticide: The worth of an infant under law

    Medical History

    (1978)
  • P.T D'Orban

    Women who kill their children

    British Journal of Psychiatry

    (1979)
  • P Evans

    Infanticide

    Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine

    (1968)
  • S Hoffbrand et al.

    Antidepressant treatment for post-natal depression (Cochrane Review)

    (2001)
  • J Jason et al.

    Homicide as a cause of pediatric mortality in the United States

    Pediatrics

    (1983)
  • I Jones et al.

    Familiality of the puerperal trigger in bipolar disorder: Results of a family study

    American Journal of Psychiatry

    (2001)
  • R Landsdowne

    Infanticide: Psychiatrists in the plea bargaining process

    Monash Law Review

    (1990)
  • Law Reform Commission of New South Wales. (1993) Discussion paper (31)—Provocation, Diminished Responsibility and...
  • Law Reform Commission of New South Wales. (1997). Report 83-Partial defences to murder: Provocation and infanticide....
  • M.N Marks et al.

    Infanticide in England and Wales

    Medicine, Science and the Law

    (1993)
  • Cited by (0)

    View full text