Wicked Children

by Karen Maitland

First published 2016

Amazon

3.4(679)

History records a disturbing number of murders committed by children and adolescents, cases that challenged contemporary assumptions about innocence, responsibility and punishment. This short nonfiction collection revisits several such crimes, reconstructing what is known about the young offenders, their victims and the societies that judged them.

Rather than treating the cases as simple curiosities, Maitland places them within changing ideas of childhood, law, morality and criminal blame. The stories show how courts and communities have struggled to decide when a child can be held responsible for deliberate violence and how sensational accounts can shape the memory of a crime.