Write a paper addressing the following prompts:

A recurring theme of the textbook is “Who is to blame – the individual or society”. What is your opinion on this? What do you think of professor Humbolt’s explanation?

Pick two theories from Chapters 3-9 to explain this kind of “senseless killing”.

The mini papers will give you practice with writing in a formal manner using APA format— skills you will need for your entire academic career. You will be performing a small amount of research into a topic related to the course, and formulating evidence-based arguments addressing a prompt.

Each paper must include at least one citation from a scholarly source that was not required reading in the course. This will require some research at the library. Scholarly sources include peer-reviewed academic journals or official government publications.

Read the fictionalized case below:

Three teenage boys were arrested in a small town in Maine, and charged with beating a homeless man to death with a baseball bat in an underground parking garage. A surveillance camera captured the beating, and the three boys were identified by residents who watched the video clip on local TV news.

When asked by reporters to explain this kind of senseless killing, professor Humbolt said: “Well, it is not senseless. Crime is a social event, not just an isolated instance of individual activity. And in much youth crime we see patterns of co-offending. Criminal behavior is often attributable to social failings rather than to individual choice. Consider, for a moment, the backgrounds of these young men. Were they subjected to physical abuse while there were growing up? Was violence what they learned at the hands of older siblings or parents? Were they, in this instance, involved in some adolescent rite of passage, maybe even in initiation into a gang? Did they feel forced to behave this way because of peer pressure? Was it something they saw on television or in video games that they might have played and then decided to reenact?” (Schmalleger, 2017, p. 42).