By Kathleen M. Heide, Ph.D.
There has been a resurgence of interest in girls who kill, following the report of two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls who stabbed another girl of the same age 19 times on 31 May 2014. The girls reportedly had planned to kill their friend following a birthday sleepover to demonstrate their allegiance to a fictionalized Internet character known as Slender Man. Despite the horror and the apparent senseless nature of the attack, all three girls had some good fortune.
Although the victim had been left for dead, she miraculously lived. Had one of the stab wounds been a millimeter closer to a major artery by the heart, the victim would have bled to death. The victim crawled from the woods towards the street and cried for help. Had she not had the will to live and the good fortune of a passerby who heard her cries and took immediate action, the two assailants would have been facing murder charges instead of attempted murder charges. Under today’s sentencing laws, these two 12-year-old girls if convicted of premeditated murder in adult court could have spent the rest of their lives in prison.
The story sparked national attention given the age and gender of the assailants and the viciousness of the act. Questions quickly followed: Are murders by girls on the rise? Do girls who commit lethal violence differ from boys?
I have been evaluating juvenile homicide offenders and analyzing murder arrest trends in the United States for 30 years. My analyses of over 40,000 case of juveniles (ages 6-17) arrested nationally for murder and non-negligent manslaughter provide convincing evidence that the involvement of girls does not show an increasing trend over the years. On the average, the proportion of juveniles arrested for murder who were female since the mid-1970s has been about 8%. Stated another way, 92% of kids under 18 who are arrested for murder are boys. Analyses of victims, weapons used, co-defendant status, and circumstances indicate that there are significant differences (not due to chance) between boys and girls arrested for murder.
Girls under 18 are significantly more likely than boys:
- To kill intimate partners
- To kill victims under age 5
- To kill family members
- To use a knife, personal weapon, or weapon other than a gun
- To kill a female victim
- To act alone
- To be involved in a conflict-related killings (e.g., argument)
Boys under 18 are significantly more likely than girls:
- To kill adolescents and adults
- To kill strangers
- To use a gun
- To kill male victims
- To be involved in crime-related killings
- To be involved in gang-related killings
- To use accomplices to kill
The Wisconsin stabbing brought attention once again to youth violence in the United States. While murders committed by juveniles under 18 have decreased substantially since 1993, when they reached record highs, it is no time for complacence. This tragic case underscores the importance of parents to be aware of their children’s activities and to monitor their Internet activities. While it is unknown what factors in concert propelled these girls to plot for months to kill their friend, one fact is known from their statements to the police: their belief in a homicidal mythical internet character was part of the near lethal equation.
Kathleen M. Heide, Ph.D. is a Professor of Criminology at the University of South Florida, Tampa, and author of Understanding Parricide: When Sons and Daughters Kill Parents (Oxford U. Press, 2013), Animal Cruelty: Pathway to Violence against People (Alta-Mira, 2004), Young Killers: The Challenge of Juvenile Homicide (Sage, 1999), and Why Kids Kill Parents: Child Abuse and Adolescent Homicide (Ohio State University Press, 1992).
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only brain sciences articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
The post Girls who kill appeared first on OUPblog.
By Philip J. Cook and Kristin A. Goss
The debate over gun control generates more heat than light. But no matter how vigorously the claims and counterclaims are asserted, the basic facts are not just a matter of personal opinion. Here are our conclusions about some of the factual issues that are at the heart of the gun debate.
- Keeping a handgun to guard against intruders is now a Constitutional right. In Heller vs. District of Columbia (2008) and McDonald vs. Chicago (2010) the US Supreme Court ruled by a 5-4 majority that the Second Amendment provides a personal right to keep guns in the home. States and cities are hence not allowed to prohibit the private possession of handguns. However, the Court made it clear in these decisions that the Second Amendment does not rule out reasonable regulations of gun possession and use.
- Half of gun owners indicate that the primary reason they own a gun is self-defense. In practice, however, guns are only used in about 3% of cases where an intruder breaks into an occupied home, or about 30,000 times per year. That compares with over 42 million households with guns. One way to understand just how rare gun use is in self-defense of the home is to look at it this way: on average, a gun-owning household will use a gun to defend against an intruder once every 1,500 years.
- As many Americans die of gunshot wounds as in motor-vehicle crashes (around 33,000). In the last 30 years, over 1 million Americans have died in civilian shootings — more than all American combat deaths in all wars in the last century.
Non violence sculpture by Carl Fredrik Reutersward, Malmo, Sweden. Photo by Francois Polito. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
- Most gun deaths in the United States are suicides. There are 20,000 gun suicides per year, compared with 11,000 gun homicides and 600 fatal accidents. While there are hundreds of thousands of serious suicide attempts each year, mostly with drugs and cutting instruments, half of the successful suicides are with guns. The difference is in lethality — the case-fatality rate with guns is 90%, far higher than for the other common means. Availability influences choice of weapon; states with the highest prevalence of gun ownership have four times the gun suicide rate as the states with the lowest prevalence.
- The homicide rate today is half of what it was in 1991. That is part of the good news in the United States — violent crime rates of all kinds have plunged since the early 1990s, and violent crime with guns has declined in proportion. (Two thirds of all homicides are committed with guns.) Still, homicide remains a serious problem — homicide is the second leading cause of death for American youths. Our homicide rates remain far higher than those of Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Israel, and other wealthy countries. We are not an exceptionally violent nation, but criminal violence in America is much more likely to involve guns and hence be fatal.
- The widespread availability of guns in America does not cause violence, nor does it prevent violence. Generally speaking there is little statistical relationship between the prevalence of gun ownership in a jurisdiction and the overall rate of robbery, rape, domestic violence, or aggravated assault. But where gun ownership is common, the violence is more likely to involve guns and hence be more deadly than in jurisdictions where guns are scarcer. In place of the old bumper strip, we’d say: “Guns don’t kill people, they just make it real easy.”
- The primary goal of gun regulation is to save lives by separating guns and violence. Federal and state laws regulate who is allowed to possess them, the circumstances under which they can be carried and discharged in public, certain design features, the record-keeping required when they are transferred, and the penalties for criminal use. The goal is to make it less likely that criminal assailants will use a gun. The evidence is clear that some of these regulations are effective and do save lives.
- Gun violence can also be reduced by reducing overall violence rates. Gun violence represents the intersection of guns and violence. Effective action to strengthen our mental health, education, and criminal justice systems would reduce intentional violence rates across the board, including gun violence (both suicide and criminal assault). But there is no sense in the assertion that we should combat the causes of violence instead of regulating guns. The two approaches are quite distinct and both important.
Kristin A. Goss is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University. She is the author of Disarmed: The Missing Movement for Gun Control in America. Philip J. Cook is ITT/Terry Sanford Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics and Sociology at Duke University. He is the co-author (with Jens Ludwig) of Gun Violence: The Real Costs. Kristen A. Goss and Philip J. Cook are co-authors of The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know®.
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only current affairs articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.
The post Eight facts about the gun debate in the United States appeared first on OUPblog.
