Criminological characteristics the personality of the hidden killer and other persons, involved in murder for hire

Introduction: Murder for hire is one of the most dangerous types of qualified murders, since this crime is often used to solve various problems of the customer, and is carried out by persons who have nothing to do with the victim, which greatly complicates the disclosure and investigation of these crimes. "Contract killing" causes significant harm not only directly to the victim, his company (if he is a businessman), as well as his relatives, but also to society as a whole. As a result of the commission of murders for hire, the general anxiety threshold of the population rises; the crime allows a number of persons (customers) to solve economic, personal and other problems in such a radical way, while creating a false stereotype about the possibility of implementing this method of solving problems with other persons. In addition, murder for hire is one of the few crimes that has an exclusively group character, associated with a clear distribution of the roles of accomplices. Meanwhile, traditionally, when analyzing the personality of a criminal in these crimes, only the direct perpetrators were characterized, other accomplices remained outside the study and there was no clear picture of their personality. However, knowledge of the personal characteristics and characteristics of criminals associated with the commission of murder for hire, especially in comparison with earlier research results, will facilitate the process of identifying and neutralizing persons involved in the commission of this crime at the preparation stage; and also to carry out a direct warning against those persons who have not yet committed these crimes, but are ready: some - to make a decision to hire a killer, others - to carry it out. Materials and Methods: The main research method was the study of criminal cases and other materials, as well as the survey method in the form of interviews and questionnaires. It should be pointed out that the personality of the hired killer (direct executor) is central in the mechanism of committing murder for hire. Meanwhile, as already mentioned, murders for hire are never an individual crime, and therefore the criminological characterization is complicated here by the role of the offender in committing the type of murder in question. Therefore, in a criminological analysis of the characteristics of the personality of such criminals, it is necessary to single out the actual perpetrators of the murders and their customers, as well as other accomplices (instigators, accomplices), which in this study are called "persons involved in the murder for hire." During the study, 158 defendants in criminal cases of murder for hire were studied. Among them, 52 direct perpetrators of the crime were identified; 54 - organizers and 52 instigators and accomplices of a hired killer. Such an empirical amount of data seems to be quite representative of the type of crime under consideration, since their level (at least in the modern period) was extremely low. In order to obtain the results presented below, it was necessary to study criminal cases over a long period of time (1994 - 2022) and over a large territory[150], since hired killers are not massively concentrated within the same correctional institution or subject of the Russian Federation. This is probably why there are few works devoted to the criminological study of the characteristics of such a person [2, p. 297-308; 3, p. 97 - 100; 4, p. 79 - 147]). The presented results of the study are most interesting in that they were compared in a number of parameters with comparable results of studies conducted on average more than 20 years ago. In addition, in all available studies, the characteristics were given only to the hired killer (performer), the characteristics of persons involved in the murder for hire (organizers, instigators, accomplices) were not carried out by anyone. The presented study was carried out according to the traditional structure of parameters used to study any personality of criminals. We are talking about a combination of socio-demographic, socio-role, moral and psychological characteristics that make it possible to determine a typical portrait of each participant in this most dangerous type of murder. The Results of the Study: Analysis of the data obtained indicates that there is a significant differentiation in the socio-demographic characteristics of these groups and similarities in their moral and psychological characteristics. Comparison of the obtained data on the personality of a hired killer with the results of previous studies conducted twenty years ago shows changes in socio-demographic characteristics in the direction of worsening the criminal's socialization and similar moral and psychological characteristics.