Homicides of Children and Youth: A Developmental Perspective (From Out of the Darkness: Contemporary Perspectives on Family Violence, P 17-34, 1997, Glenda K. Kantor, Jana L. Jasinski, eds. - See NCJ-171756)

• NCJ Number: 171757
• Author(s): D Finkelhor
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 18 pages
• Sale Source: Sage Publications, Inc
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This chapter examines the different sources of child homicide and different prevention strategies.

Abstract

From a developmental perspective, juvenile homicides should be studied in at least three distinct segments: young children, including infanticide and child abuse homicide; school-aged children; and teenagers. This chapter discusses each in order of decreasing frequency: teens, young children, school-aged children. A goal of developmental victimology is to demarcate developmental patterns that can be formulated as general principles regarding crime victimization. Four such principles are relatively easy to observe in the case of homicide. As children get older: (1) family perpetrators are a smaller portion of all perpetrators; (2) their victimizations come to resemble those of adults; (3) gender patterns become more specific; and (4) their risk for victimization is decreasingly determined by family-related factors and increasingly related to more general social factors. The chapter observes that child homicide should be considered a distinct phenomenon apart from other child victimization and it is risky to use child homicide data to interpret general trends in youth victimization. Tables, figures, note, references