Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ArticlesOffender and Offense Characteristics of a Nonrandom Sample of Adolescent Mass Murderers
Section snippets
METHOD
We defined adolescent mass murder as the intentional killing of at least three victims (other than the perpetrator) in a single incident by an individual 19 years old or younger. We limited our data collection to individuals who used a firearm, cutting instrument, or blunt object with or without other weapons, as these account for most of the killing instruments used in any homicide in the United States (FBI, 1999).
We searched multiple psychiatric, psychological, medical, social, and criminal
RESULTS
Data sufficient for inclusion in this study were gathered on 27 incidents of adolescent mass murder involving 34 perpetrators. Although a few other cases (less than six) were found that did not provide sufficient credible data for inclusion, and there are other cases of school shootings that resulted in fewer casualties, our comprehensive search leads us to conclude that our sample represents most of the universe of adolescent mass murderers, as we have defined them, in North America in the
DISCUSSION
Adolescent mass murder appears to be the exclusive domain of males—to a greater, but perhaps not significant, degree than other violent acts. The gender disparity in criminal violence is a consistent finding that cuts across racial, ethnic, national, cultural, and socioeconomic lines (Wilson and Herrnstein, 1985). The racial distribution of our subjects appears similar to population distributions in the United States as recorded in the 1990 census (U.S. Census Bureau, 1990) but is grossly
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This study was supported by a grant from Forensis, Inc.