Children convicted of homicide.

Before the abolition of the death penalty for homicide the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 defined 18 years as the minimum age for execution, the last teenager to be hanged being "Flossie" Forsythe in 1960 at the age of 18. Prior to 1966 a murderer could "hang by the neck until dead" and due to this courts were more ready to allow a culprit to be termed "insane". Since then the number of "insane" murderers of both sexes and all ages has fallen from four times the figure for those classed as "normal" or "sane" to a nearly equal number as shown in the Figure. Due to this people are now going to prison who would formerly have gone to Broadmoor or Rampton, an unforeseen development of community psychiatry (Walsh-Brennan, 1973). Regarding factors associated with the development of child killers it has been stated (Home Office, .1968) that "there are many influences on the behaviour of children and that of the family is particularly important." In his Sing-Sing Prison