When Young People Kill

While for criminologists and experts cases are closed when court decisions are pronounced, the renowned child and youth psychiatrist has followed perpetrators’ fates far beyond their judgments and their imprisonment. It is this long-term outlook that makes his book uniquely revealing. Perpetrators are not only young people who previously showed violent and criminal tendencies; neither are they principally those who suffer from acute psychiatric illness; there are also healthy youths from stable social backgrounds who commit violent crimes, and those who reintegrate into society and the world of work when they leave prison. Remschmidt explains which social and psychological influences contribute to violent actions, why there are gender differences, and how young perpetrators of violence are psychiatrically assessed. His book also includes concrete demands, based on forty years of practice, to help reduce youth violence.