ABSTRACT
The premise of this chapter is that there are forms of violent behaviour (including terrorist and extremist violence) that need to be fundamentally understood as public acts. In this, there is a useful distinction to be made with those acts of intimate violence that have been described in previous chapters. It is argued that this is a useful distinction as it is not only the public nature of the act itself, but also the circumstances of the offences and the characteristics of the offenders that are distinctive in other ways. As the chapter reveals, although many of the crimes being described here are grave, the profiles of the offenders appear to be very different from those of serious offenders and persistent offenders described in Chapter 3. There are, however, some more familiar themes. Ultimately, violence within both categories can be understood as developing through experiences of disconnection and the threat of abandonment. Just as in the cases of intimate violence, issues of shame, masculinity and sexuality emerge here as significant factors.
The following categories are examined:
Celebrity assassination
School shootings (rampage killings)
Terrorism (and suicidal terrorism in particular)
