Fatal Family Violence and the Dementias

This book explores dementia-related aggression, violence, and homicide through a detailed analysis of "gray mist killings."

Neil Websdale is Director of the Family Violence Center at Arizona State University and Director of the National Domestic Violence Fatality Review Initiative (NDVFRI). He has published work on domestic violence, the history of crime, policing, social change, and public policy. His books include: Rural Woman Battering and the Justice System: An Ethnography (1998), which won the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Outstanding Book Award in 1999; Understanding Domestic Homicide (1999); Making Trouble: Cultural Constructions of Crime, Deviance, and Control (co-edited with Jeff Ferrell, 1999); Policing the Poor: From Slave Plantation to Public Housing (2001), winner of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Outstanding Book Award in 2002 and the Gustavus-Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Award in 2002; Familicidal Hearts: The Emotional Styles of 211 Killers (2010). Professor Websdale's social policy work involves helping to establish networks of domestic violence fatality review teams across the United States and elsewhere. His extensive fatality review work has contributed to the NDVFRI receiving the prestigious 2015 Mary Byron Foundation Celebrating Solutions Award. He has also worked on issues related to community policing, full faith and credit, and risk assessment and management in domestic violence cases. Professor Websdale trained as a sociologist at the University of London, England and currently lives and works in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Part 1 Chapter 1: Gray Mist Killings Chapter 2: Dementing Illness: A Brief Introduction Part 2 Chapter 3: Dementing Illness and Abnormalities of Mind Chapter 4: Mercy and Exhaustion Chapter 5: Prior Intimate Partner Violence and Abuse Chapter 6: Thieves and Fraudsters Part 3 Chapter 7: Problematic Contemporary Responses Chapter 8: The Fiction of Prediction: Risk and Danger Part 4 Chapter 9: Making Sense of Gray Mist Killings Chapter 10: Global Implications