When Good Kids Kill Analysis

When Good Kids Kill

Studies show that parents are six times more likely to kill their children than children are to kill their parents. But these facts are changing. The number of adolescents in jail has doubled over the past ten years and 115,000 of these arrests were for violent crimes. Michael D. Kelleher, author of When Good Kids Kill, has looked into cases of teenage violence and why they happen. What happens when a good kid decides to murder? What causes the radical and almost instantaneous change in their behavior? And most importantly, what can we do as a society to change it? Murder committed by a juvenile is unfortunately a growing trend in our country. There have been enough of these
Parricide is defined as when children murder their parents. Many children are pushed to kill their parents, either from childhood abuse or poverty. But some children seem to have no reason why. They don 't know why they murdered their parents. They stated that they loved their parents, and they had always been given love by their parents. One example of this terrible crime is Danny Connolly. Danny was a fourteen year old high school freshman who excelled at sports and academics. He was on the honor roll, the varsity football team and the the varsity wrestling team. But most of all it was widely known throughout their small town that he came from a close knit loving family. The Danny was caught smoking by his mother and grounded for a week. Danny was outraged by this punishment that he deemed too severe for his crime. He came home from school, picked up his .22-caliber handgun, and shot his mother repeatedly. Danny then readily gave himself up to authorities, confessing his crime. When asked why he did it all he could say was “I couldn’t take the nagging anymore (page 56)”. He described what he had felt as he had committed the murder was an rage that he couldn’t control. No one close to Danny could help to explain his actions. Phillip Conolly, Danny’s father made a statement to the police, “It’s like he [Danny] woke up possessed one morning and became a different kid for a day. Then he snapped out of it and it had been done,
He specializes in strategic management, human resource management, staff education, threat assessment, and management crisis resolution for organizations in the private and public sectors. He likes to write about true crime, mystery, and Native American traditions. He writes about whatever interests him, and although this must make him happy it makes me wonder if he is truly an expert in any one field. He doesn’t have a degree in criminology, but he seemed to do his research. The book is filled with with references to other articles, statistics from the US government, and first-hand accounts from the court rooms. All the information in the book is based purely on facts until the last chapter where he makes his case on how to change the situation on teenage violence in America. Even if his degree isn’t in criminology, Kelleher has made a life out of being a renaissance man. Kelleher has written several books in the field of criminology including Murder Most Rare: The Female Serial Killer, Suspect Zero, Flashpoint, and Three Times Dead. So while Kelleher’s lack of a background in criminology made me cautious in reading this book, the thoughts were eased when I learned that he has already written several highly regarded books in the criminology