Intermediate Composition

Brandon Starcheus
Response 5
Although it is common to hear of homicide in the US, it is less common to hear of child

murderers. David Hemenway and Sara J. Solnick summarize their study of 146 incidents of

murders involving children aged 0-14 as the suspects in “The epidemiology of homicide

perpetration by children”. Their research spanned all incidents reported to a database which

includes 16 states of the US from 2005 to 2012. They use their best judgment to create 5

categories to describe the cases, and then provide statistics for each. Although their study does

provide as large a sample size as they could obtain with the database and they do address many

limitations of the study, their research still holds several other unidentified weaknesses.

Specifically, as Ioannidis discusses in “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”, the

research still holds several biases, and research itself is more likely to be conclusive than

inconclusive.

The study’s main form of bias comes from the subject matter itself, as well as the

arbitrary categorization of the murders. Throughout the study they read reports of murders and

determined what fit into the category of a murder, what fit into their definition of “child” (0-14

years), and then categorized the murders themselves from there. All of these identifications are

open for debate, such as the “accident” of a child accidentally shooting a friend. Deciding that

the study was only interested in children 0-14 rides on the assumption that by the age of 15

people have the ability to intelligently choose between life and death, and that their case no

longer applies to the study. Finally, they choose five categories to place murders in, and have

another one for all cases that don’t fit into any of the five. The selection of these categories is

open to interpretation and could be different for different analysts, which limits the validity of

the research. They address these concerns in the article, which is good, but they do not provide
 Intermediate Composition
Brandon Starcheus
Response 5
any solutions. Even though the five categories are able to encapsulate most of the cases, 43 of the

146 are in the “other” category. This is almost 30% of the cases, which is a significant amount to

simply put off to the side. Perhaps the study should have selected better categories to include

more data.

Perhaps most significantly of all, the study made use of data from the database, which

only has suspects and does not necessarily include the definite murderer. In this way, the entire

study is based on hypothetical data. The children could have been wrongly accused, or there

could be thousands of cases of murder out there not reported because the child was able to cover

up their involvement. In either case, there is a subset of the population of child murders that has

not been accessed for the study. Although they address the small sample size in the article, the

inaccuracy of the data they do have could be harmful as well. Instead of putting trust in the

thoroughness of the US legal system, they should have increased their sample size. However

with the tools the study had available, their research is extremely thorough.

Finally, the study used statistics directly from their data instead of doing statistical

calculations to incorporate margins of error due to their small sample size. This also contributes

to the validity of the numbers. For larger samples, farther reaching assumptions can be made, but

this study made very broad suggestions without any inclusion of error. Even though the study did

use all relevant cases in their database and their categorizations are quite evident, there are too

many arbitrary selections and too little regard for error that makes the research very limited in

scope. Until a more thorough approach surfaces, though, this is the most complex and

comprehensive study on child murderers and their motives. The numbers may not be completely

accurate, but the study’s suggestions for increased safety in the US have much validity.