RB 76

also the many men with no positions, except possibly low ranking military, among these criminals. Somewhat of an unintentional counter story is provided in a study by Edmond Locard where he relates a typical case similar to the northern European, but from Lyon, and he obviously does not know that these kinds of crimes have been seen as a particular type in other research as he also relates in depth two other murder cases and sees them all as examples of crimes where no obvious and traditional motive can be discerned. His aim is to demonstrate the existence of crimes with motives not covered by four classical types: ”la défense, le besoin, la passion et la folie”.934 His final conclusion is, however, that there are no crimes lacking motives. There are however crimes with rare or hidden, because of the silence of the perpetrator, motives.935 He however demonstrates that the view that these crimes form a specific group is not necessary. Krogh has also been close to Locard in using the name ”grundløse drab”.936 It is not surprising that a strand in debate and research sees this as a crime without motive. When the crime is murder, the victim, normally in some way the object of the crime, is here more of an obstacle. However, the idea of a crime, especially a murder, lacking motive and the crimes where no motive was readily found also, according to Foucault, posed a problem to the new penal system he understood as emerging during the latter half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. In this the crime and criminal had to be rational and understandable to be punishable. In the other cases psychiatry found a role in interpreting criminal and crime. The problem of the cases without apparent motive not only gave psychiatry a larger role in reference to the courts, but it also made crimes without motive to a category of itCrimes without cause the explanations of the acts 934 Locard 1939 ’the defense, the need, the passion and the madness’ (quotation col 412). 935 Locard 1939 col 421 sq. 936 ’murders without cause’ Krogh 2000 p 228. 261

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