When kids kill : shocking crimes of lost innocence

Kids. They know about sex, they are experimenting with drugs and, increasingly, they are committing offences and finding themselves in court.

There are also those who commit the worst possible crimes: those who have ended another person's life before their own have properly begun.Cases of child homicide are rare but they are especially horrific.

Surely children are not "born killers"? Surely evil is learned, and not innate? The author goes behind the sensationalist headlines to investigate why these crimes happen and examines child homicide in our modern violent, confusing world and contextualizes it against the cruel, unforgiving retribution of yesterday.

The cases are shocking but sometimes the path towards them is even more so.

This is what happens when childhood is trodden underfoot: this is when, and why, kids kill.