Jason Alexander Downie: Triple Murder Case by an 18 Year-Old

Criminology is often referred as the study of crime and its offenders. yet many argued about the definition of crime itself. There are various definitions of crime available, such as the legalistic definition where crime is defined as the act of conviction of criminal law (by Paul Tappan), or the statistical definition where an action is considered a crime if the frequency of it conducted is low (by L.T. Wilkins) (Muncie J 1996), leaving the fact that crime itself is not definite. The definition of crime might changes overtime due to the alteration of culture, moral conduct, values, beliefs, etc. For instance, the act of sodomy was considered a crime once, yet today even gay marriages has been legalised. On the contrary, regardless to the changes of the definition, murder has always been considered as an delinquent behaviour and a serious crime. The punishment would usually be equally burdensome, varying in death sentence (such as hanging, beheading and lethal injection) to what is more common at this modern era, a long-time to life-time imprisonment. This essay will discuss a murder crime occurred in Adelaide and will explain the crime causation along with the relevant theory.

The criminal case covered in this essay involve a triple family murder done by an 18 year old student named Jason Alexander Downie. Jason migrated from Kilmarnock, Scotland to Adelaide, Australia in 2006 with his mother. He was known to have sexual infatuation with a 16 year old named Chantelle Rowe (Shears 2012) and was jealous with one of his friend who was dating her. Downie’s lawyer said that his client has no intention killing anyone and only wanted to “confront Chantelle’s boyfriend in the mistaken belief that he was staying [at her home...

... middle of paper ...

...2012-04-18/kapunda-killer-jason-downie-motive/3957046 [Accessed: 12 Apr 2014].

Matza, D. (1964) Delinquency and drift. New York: Wile

Muncie, J. and Mclaughlin, E. (1996) The Problem of Crime. London: Sage Publications in

association with the Open University, pp. 6-19

Shears, R. (2012). ‘Obsessed expat teenager stabbed parents of girl to death before raping and

killing her too because she spurned his advances’ Mail Online, 17 April 2012. Available at: http://www.Shears.co.uk/news/article-2130901/Kapunda-murders-Jason-Alexander-Downie-stabbed-Chantelle-Rowes-parents-death.html

Sutherland E. H., Cressey, D. R. and Luckenbill, D. (1992) Principles of criminology. 11th ed. Dix

Hills, N.Y.: General Hall, pp. 88-90

Sykes, G. and Matza, D. (1957) Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. Kindle ed.

American Sociological Association, vol 2 pp. 664-670