• Korean Security Journal
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• no.29
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• pp.139-162
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to compare with the general and behavioral characteristics between simple and serial arsonists using the data derived from Scientific Crime Analysis System, Criminal Filing Search System, and Crime Information Management System. The analysis and findings reported here are derived from data extracted from 160 arsonists arrested by police officer. The independent variables included such socio-economic characteristic as arsonists' gender, age, occupation, education level, and previous criminal records of arsonists, and finally the general characteristics of the scene of fire settings. The dependent variable is whether or not serial fire setter. To achieve the purpose, the analysis of frequencies and cross-tab were conducted. According to frequence and cross-tab analysis, there are great differences of the general and behavior characteristics between two groups. In the comparison of simple and serial arsonists, serial arsonists are more likely to have previous criminal records, low socio-economic status, unmarried and no cohabitants than simple arsonists. furthermore, serial arsonists are more likely to use garbage papers for fire setting in the scene of the crime, to have mental or psychological problems, and to get involved in fire setting for the psychological pleasure than simple arsonists do. The present research has some obvious limitations. First, the analysis is based only on arsonists arrested by police officers. These may be considerable differences in arsonists arrested by police officers and fire setters not arrested by them. Additional research is needed to assess the extent to which these findings would apply to fire setters not arrested by police officer in Korea. Secondly, the data in this study are cross-sectional and simple cross-tab analysis are used. Potential limitation of cross-sectional data concerns the inability to specify the changes in measures as arsonists behavioral characteristics. Therefore, further studies need to use longitudinal data and more complicate statistical techniques such as correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, or LISREL models to specify the casual relationships between dependent and independent variables for fire settings. Even if this study has some limitations, it is meaningful in which it first investigated the comparison of simple and serial arsonists focusing on the general and behavioral characteristics between two groups in Korea.