ABSTRACT
Violent crimes can be as baffling as they are repelling. In England, two 10year-old boys lured a 2-year-old away from his mother at a shopping mall; they took him down to the local railroad tracks, where they beat him to death and left his body to be run over by a train. In the United States, a group of teenagers shot and killed a man whose car they were stealing-even though the man had willingly handed over his car keys and was not resisting the theft in any way. In Massachusetts, a group of young teenage schoolgirls planned to murder their English teacher because she was too strict:
After the final bets were in, Okiki, a 13-year-old honor student, sat stone-faced at her desk in English class, silently preparing to collect a couple of hundred dollars on a dare. She had settled on a simple plan. Just wait for the bell to ring, reach into her book bag, grab the 12-inch fillet knife she had brought from home and stab the teacher in the chest…. But there is something that troubles [Sergeant] Cambarere even more [than this plan]: his first glimpse of the girls when they were brought into the police department. “They were giggling.” (Hull, 1993, p. 37)
In some social circumstances, it is not so difficult to understand why violence happens. For example, soldiers shoot other soldiers in a battle because failing to do so may mean their own death. Even John Hinckley’s assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan had some purpose behind it: He was attempting to impress Jodie Foster, an actress whom he admired.
