Growing violence among children and media influence in America

Kids Who Kill

The growing social phenomenons' regarding violence among children and especially such heinous crimes as murder is beginning to startle the culture as a whole. The world, not the just the United States is desperately seeking answers for this growing problem. The problem has gained international recognition as similar crimes are becoming evident in other nations, such as the killing of 2-year-old James Bulger in the U.K. By two very young boys. Yet, when one looks at the statistics in the United States alone they are made painfully aware that such events are increasing in number and in severity.

In the United States,...between 1984 and 1989 the number of youths arrested for murder nationwide in the United States more than doubled from 1,004 to 2,208. One study showed that youths under eighteen years of age now make up about ten per cent of all homicide arrests in the United States.

Lowenstein)

The current question has become the big, WHY? Why are these children violent, angry, and why do they feel like the consequences of their actions are minimal to either the victim or themselves.

There is a great deal of evidence that the media plays a role in the situation as its increasing glorification of violence creates scenarios and scenes that then become mundane and commonplace to a child. Children imitate that which they see, and they are made aware through the media that acts as heinous as graphic sexually motivated murder are punished by a bunch of people wearing plain clothes asking the killer questions in a room with a one way mirror, conviction in these dramatic representations are not shown and sentencing is a mystery. Children are intelligent enough to understand that the fate of the killer is bad but on the screen it doesn't look like anything to be afraid of. Additionally, the representations of the actual crimes, where they occur often leave the child believing that they are easy to commit, staged punches and kicks are something anyone of any strength and size can manage with one dramatic groan or maybe even in silence. Weapons are easy to weald and even look cool in the movies and on television, constantly present in most homes.

The minimizing of the consequences of violence the constant torrent of the embellishment of violent acts and violent people; the idealization of lawyers and doctors; the acceptance of dysfunctional families, sexual abuse and wife battering -- all these have become a subliminal brainwashing

Hausen 169)

The same could be said for the helplessness of the youthful victims in the cases of murder here being addressed. It has somehow become popular to see the helpless as victims rather than as human beings, children are unwelcome in society and are either superficially capable in the media or desperately intolerable and in need of physical and psychological abuse.

When children who kill are interviewed the kinds of problems and psychological states they exhibit, where they are not directly associated with a disassociative disorders are linked almost inextricably to feelings of complete and utter lack of personal control over their lives. The finding among many children who have taken the life of another is often that they feel trapped by the unfair and arbitrary control of peers, parents and educators, in that order. "Illich claims that schools are meant to enforce a social class system where children learn values appropriate to their class. He feels that "[c]ompulsory education forces an individual to compete for equality," -- which is a paradox.

(Hausen 163) Competeing for equality in conditions that are arbitrarily created does not often give a child the ability to choose right from wrong when much smaller decisions are at stake than whether or not to beat their playmates with baseball bats, because they fear punishment for other more slight transgressions against them, see the Phillips case above.

According to a leading child treatment specialist, there are several traits that supercede all others with regard to children who commit murder. These traits an almost always associated with the environment and have implications for prevention, rather than treatment. These children, already violent offenders are troubled in many ways, according to Lowenstein they have not only been failed by their environment but feel as if they are failures themselves.

A witnessing violence in reality such as between parents or others, suffering from either physical or sexual abuse themselves, being interested excessively in acts of violence such as watching violent TV programmes or videos, having failed to be disciplined sufficiently when acts of aggressiveness occur towards others, towards animals and hence having failed to develop a conscience about such behaviour, there is also frequently a history of both being bullied and acting as bullies.

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What happens in these cases, according to Lownestwein is that children fail to form the connection between what they are thinking of doing, actually doing and the consequences of their actions. They do not expect to be caught or punished because they have not been shown this to be the case in their history. Their much earlier transgressions are ignored or avoided by parents, who come ill equipped to deal with them or worse yet, they are physically punished, further enforcing their idea that a person must get what they want through violence. "Children who abuse others have frequently seen their own parents act as negative role models." These children feel as if little if any attention or feeling is expressed toward them they often do not express feelings of remorse over what they do to others.

Lowenstein)

These children also might see their own feelings of a wish to do physical harm toward another reflected in the feelings of others, the psychological term known as projection, and may be afraid or paranoid of others intentions.

Sometimes the criminal act of murder is an extension of previous anti-social acts of less serious forms of delinquency and criminality and children merely graduate to more extended and more violent and extreme forms of behaviour in the form of murder.

Lowenstein)

Anti-social behavior is rare but is often a trigger for the child, he or she does not have a clear sense of self or a clear sense of the pain he or she inflicts with his or her actions toward another. They are partly or completely disassociated from the emotionally charged elements of violence. They do not have fear, and as Lownstein states they do not often experience guilt.

Because of the relative difficulty perceived by many professionals of changing such feelings, once they have become a part of the child's psychology, the key for most would be prevention rather than rehabilitation.

Lowenstein) Though the main problem with prevention as the one and only best solution for the problem is that families are increasingly fragmented and isolated from community and warning signs could be creatively masked by an unhealthy and secretive family net. It is this lack of remorse that often leads the drive by proponents of these children being tried as adults, with punishments that fit the crimes they commit, often so heinous even professional investigators are shocked and awed by the intensity of the anger expressed by these children in their actions. "Having interviewed such children on numerous occasions, I have found that they frequently have a mask of non-feeling or defensiveness but beneath that mask there is anger, depression and in rare cases, guilt. Some of these children suffer from psychotic illness, most do not."

Lowenstein)

Lowenstein also reports that the there is a disproportionate representation of children of divorces parents with previous criminal records, and truancy. Yet, the cases of children as young as 10 are outside this possibility as children are rarely old enough to have committed offences serious enough to warrant police or official intervention by this age, though there are such cases. Also disproportionately represented where boys, minorities, and those in a lower socioeconomic bracket.

Lowenstein)

The case of Michael Hernandez on the other hand is a clear example of the kind of emotional detachment a child killer exhibits. He had dark and sinister plans, laid out in a kind of murder journal that the trial brought to light. There had been no known animosity between himself and his best friend of many years, Jamie Gough, and yet he brutally murdered him in a school restroom as a birthday present to himself, "It seems that Hernandez had devised for himself a little birthday celebration. He had a list of three people that he had planned to kill: his older sister, a long-time friend referred to in the reports as "A.D.M.," and Gough." ("Dark Ambitions: A Born Killer?" Court TV crime library website) His plans were not sketchy and indicative of an argument they were premeditated and planned, with lists of needs and necessities outlined and obtained for the killing spree.

In his journals, Hernandez had a six-page Internet printout about mass, spree, and serial murderers on which he had drawn a hanged man and had written "will become a serial killer."...He also had written a list of violent videogames and movies, had instructions for making a bomb,...Oddly, another note said, "You will be a serial killer and mass murderer, stay along, never forget God ever, have a cult and plan mass kidnapping for new world be an expert thief." ("Dark Ambitions: A Born Killer?" Court TV crime library website)

The extreme sense of disconnection found within this boy and his environment is telling of the possible causes of his actions, but they are yet unknown, probably even to him. Additionally, in a few ways Michael Hernandez's case is also anomalous, in that he came from an affluent background and attended a school for gifted and artistic children. Though one case, because of its age does bring to light many clues as to the kinds of thoughts and problems children who kill have, at startlingly early ages.

The case of Mary Bell, who had an accomplice of sort Norma Bell who was not found guilty and seemed to have played only a supportive role in the crimes, is absolutely storybook of the severity of the situation facing these children. As the crimes occurred in 1968, when Mary was 10 there have been many years of analysis concerning her case and her own reflective observations have also been detailed by the press and biographers. She has since become an adult and been released from prison (she spent several years in boys juvenile facilities and then was transferred to a women's prison) she is now a mother and a married woman. She has much to say about her history and has claimed to be a totally different person, reformed and non-violent. (many say this remains to be seen) ("Making Mary Bell" Crime TV Library website)

In her case there were many early signs of disassociative behavior and violence. She was from a troubled home, her mother an S & M. prostitute, which she was at least marginally aware of, and her father was unknown, though a man married her mother when she was an infant and was around through most of Mary's childhood. He had not much more to offer Mary than her mother, as he was a professional thief, which Mary was also marginally aware of. Mary and others have described her early life in grave detail and paint a picture of an emotionally and physically starved child, with cunning and disturbing intelligence and pride rather than remorse in her actions of violence.

At two years old, Mary was refusing to bond with others -- she was already behaving in a cold and detached manner. Mary never cried when hurt, and began lashing out violently, smashing uncle's nose with a toy. Her mother's erratic rejections and reunions didn't help. ("Making Mary Bell" Crime TV Library website)

Mary's mother often came and went in her life, frequently leaving her with other relatives for extended periods of time and then returning to retrieve her, despite her relatives pleas to let her stay. This pattern was repetitive and damming to Mary's sense of confidence and security, not to mention proving the inability of adults to protect her from harm or provide safety and security in an environment with consistency. The world in which Mary lived both inside and outside her home was poverty stricken and dangerous, as a small child she witnessed the death of her five-year-old friend, who was struck by a school bus.

This devastating event must have further retarded her ability to bond with others. In 1961, Mary started kindergarten. "She was almost always naughty," said her teacher, who once saw Mary putting her hands around the neck of another child. When told not to do that, Mary said, "Why? Can it kill him?" She was lonely, and other kids teased her. She kicked, hit and pinched the other kids, and told "tall stories all the time." ("Making Mary Bell" Crime TV Library website)

Mary was violent in what detectives called a playful manner, not at all understanding the implications of her actions, not that her crimes were not heinous but they were sadly and obviously committed by a child who had not connection to the life she was taking. She also uses TV violence as an excuse for her strangling behavior, in one point in her trial testimony. Though violence was remarkably less visible during her youth than it is today, on television there is at least one connection there between the ideas of the media and the disassociated actions of disturbed children. In all this it seems that a strong implication is that Mary committed murder as an attempt to assert control in her life, a life in which she had very little control over anything, is this not the message in many other murders?

Culminating in this disturbing trend of increased violence among children and especially, that of the killing of other children, often without remorse is the realization that even after seemingly countless years of social and cultural training to attempt to be better at raising children we are still collectively failing some of them. The statistics continue to rise and the reasons are often varied but at the root of most actions is the remarkable numbness that children express after they have committed their crimes.

These children feel a complete lack of personal control over their lives and their extreme actions seem to be a message of power and control over self and society. They feel as if the world has no care for them and therefore they should have no care for it.