Soixante ans de règlements de compte au Québec
Objectives. This thesis has two objectives. The first objective is divided in two: objective 1A is to evaluate and extend the descriptive analysis of account settlement trends started by Cordeau in his doctoral thesis of 1991. This will be done so as to compare his dataset to ours and see if any significant differences emerge; Objective 1B is to look into the construction and use of alternative account settlement rates to see which one allow us to be better capture the dynamics (ebbs and flows, general tendencies) of this particular subset of homicides. Our final objective is to use social network analysis to confirm and highlight certain findings that will come about through the descriptive analysis. The use of social network analysis will also allow us to analyze the social structure of account settlements in Quebec between 1953 and 2013. Methodology. Using datasets compiled from Allô Police and other media sources, our approach is a holistic one that seeks to incorporate descriptive statistical analysis, cross-tabulation, trend analysis and social network analysis so as to properly frame and study account settlement patterns and trends. Results. There are four main results in our study: 1) most of the trends found by Cordeau in his account settlement dataset (1970-1986) are also present within our dataset (1953-2013). There are, thus, few important variations between the two datasets; 2) compared to a general population rate, alternative rates based on the prison population or the larger criminal populations do not add to our understanding of the phenomena. However, the use of rates proposed by Morselli et al (2008) do allow for a clearer picture of unusual periods of activity within the criminal milieu; 3) criminal groups that are more exposed to violence tend to be the groups that resort to violence the most; 4) independent operators form a majority of our account settlement victim dataset and this would seem to indicate the importance of their role in organized crime. Conclusion. Our results illustrate the need for better integration of different methodologies and theories to properly analyze and understand account settlement trends. With the multiple avenues of research identified at the end of this thesis, we hope that future research can make use of theoretical and methodological integration to build a more complete picture of account settlement trends.
Homicide Violence Account settlement Homicide Violence Criminal groups Conflict Organized crime Independents