Kip Kinkle

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses and analyzes the actions of Kip Kinkle, the fifteen year old Springfield, Illinois high school student who killed his mother and father with a shotgun and then went to school and opened fire upon his classmates, killing two students in cold blood, and injuring twenty five innocent bystanders. The paper discusses the events as viewed through criminologist Travis Hirschi's social bond theory.

From the Paper:

"According to Travis Hirschi, every social network holds the individual within its fabric with four types of social bonds. These promote positive and negative opportunities for socialization and positive and negative ways to feel that one is connected to, or conforms to a norm. Hirschi did not see conformity as essentially bad, because he believed that a certain sense of conformity was necessary for appropriate socialization of adolescents. Conformity was necessary to feel that one had a future within one's society, and a social investment in playing by the rules of society and respecting the rights of others."

Sample of Sources Used:

• "Kip Kinkle." Answers.com. 2006 [21 May 2006] <http://www.answers.com/topic/kip-kinkle>
• Melo, D.D. "Travis Hirschi's Social Control Theory." Criminological Theories. 2006. [21 May 2006]< http://home.comcast.net/~ddemelo/crime/hirschi.html>
• "Placing Blame." Frontline: The Killer at Thurston High. PBS Website. 2006. [21 May 2006] <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kinkel/blame/>
• Warthen, Al. (1998) "Kip Kinkle's Confession." Frontline: The Killer at Thurston High. PBS Website. [21 May 2006] <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kinkel/etc/confesst.html>

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