To prepare:
- Review the “Final Project Overview” document located in this week’s Learning Resources so that you fully understand what is expected of you for the Final Project.
- Review and choose one of the juvenile mass school shooter cases listed below. A couple of them also killed one, or both, parents, in addition to students at school. Each of these juvenile mass school shooters was “bound over” to adult court, tried, and sentenced as adults.
- Kip Kinkel
- Charles Andrew Williams
- Barry Loukaitis
- Michael Carneal
- Luke Woodham
- Thomas “T.J.” Lane
Note: If you are an international student, you may use your local or regional laws.
- Search the Walden Library and the internet for resources (e.g., video documentaries, books, scholarly articles, or credible web resources) relevant to the case you selected to support your Final Project analysis.
Note: As part of your Final Project, you are required to include 8-10 citations derived from your research. Five of these citations must be peer-reviewed articles.
- Use the APA Course Paper Template (APA 7) found in this week’s Learning Resources to complete your Final Project.
Final Project (10- to 12-pages, not including title page and references page)Applying your own state and case law, identify forensic risk assessment factors, and evaluate your own biases, pertaining to the case you chose by doing the following:
- Provide a 1-page summary of your chosen case
- Evaluate risk factors that may have contributed to the shooter's actions. Be sure to include developmental risk factors.
- Identify what mitigating factors that could have been implemented to take the TSV offender off the pathway to violence.
- Identify each of the eight warning behaviors present in your case
- Analyze the difference between risk and threat assessment
- Recommend forensic risk assessment instruments that would be appropriate to be used in evaluating risk specific to this case.
- Evaluate your own personal biases, which may lead to weaknesses regarding how you effectively communicate the results of the forensic assessment where the defendant is a juvenile given a life sentence.
- Review/research current state laws pertaining to juveniles “bound over” to adult court. Provide an analysis of your state laws regarding juveniles sentenced as adults. Note: If you are an international student, you may use your local or regional laws.
- Explain ethical concerns that may impact your work on this case. Be sure to cite relevant APA “Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct,” “APA-LR “Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychology,” and/or APA “Multicultural Guidelines: An Ecological Approach to Context, Identity, and Intersectionality, 2017.”
The Final Project must include a minimum of five academic/scholarly references, in addition to any course readings that you may wish to reference. Please be aware that non-professional, user-created websites such as Wikipedia will not be accepted as academic/scholarly references.