Abstract

Recently, there has been a growing fear of ‘nonspecific motive crime’ in which offender’s motivation is obscure and victims are randomly selected. Especially, not only the fact that victims are targeted by a perfect stranger for no specific reasons, but also the notion that nonspecific motive crime is expected to increase for a while, exacerbate the public’s fear. However, widespread agreement upon the academic definition or conceptualization of ‘nonspecific motive crime’ has not been established yet. Furthermore, detailed statistics of its occurrence have not been identified yet, and only a little research about motivation and psychological features of offenders has been conducted. Therefore, the present study first aimed to examine various causes of nonspecific motive crime, including individual and social factors surrounding the offender. Based on these factors, the present study reviewed several nonspecific motive crimes that occurred in South Korea for recent years. The present study also differentiated nonspecific motive crime into two types-‘the social discontent’ and ‘the insane’-by analyzing the common causes and characteristics of the cases. ‘The social discontent’ refers to offenders who committed crime as their expression of accumulated frustration, dissatisfaction, or anger with the present state of the society, mostly derived from one’s difficult situations, such as loss of employment or poverty. On the other hand, ‘the insane’ refers to the offenders who committed crime mainly because of their mental disorder, such as paranoid schizophrenia and depression. By analyzing the causes and characteristics and differentiating them into types, the present study eventually seeks ways of systematically preventing nonspecific motive crime. Finally, limitations of the present study are discussed and suggestions for future research are made.