ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the nuanced ways in which discourses of childhood development frame our understandings of 'children who kill'. It begins by drawing on original Home Office data to examine what 'children who kill' look like in terms of gender, age and circumstances of the incident. The chapter then explores how three particular contexts: 'parricides, school shootings and child soldiers', in which children kill have preoccupied academics and researchers to such an extent that they have become 'criminological phenomena' and have consequently shaped our thinking about all children who kill. The 'exceptional' status of 'children who kill' and claims of their aberration has the potential to open up space for alternative understandings of childhood to emerge and allow us to challenge the status quo. Unfortunately, current dominant discourses of 'children who kill' merely serve to perpetuate entrenched westernised conceptions of child development.
