Final Project: School Shooter Case Study Analysis

For your Final Project, you will review one of the following 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.

o       Kip Kinkel o Charles Andrew Williams o Barry Loukaitis o Michael Carneal o Luke Woodham

o       Thomas “T.J.” Lane

For this Final Project, you must 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. 

As part of your Final Project, you are required to include 8-10 citations derived from your research, of which you must include a minimum of 5 peer-reviewed articles. Please be aware that non-professional, user-created websites such as Wikipedia will not be accepted as academic/scholarly references. 

Be sure to cite relevant information from the 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.” These resources can be found in the Week 10 Learning Resources. 

Use the APA Course Paper Template (APA 7) found in the Week 10 Learning Resources to complete your Final Project.

Assignment (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 8 warning behaviors present in your case  • Analyze the difference between risk and threat assessment

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Final Project: School Shooter Case Study Analysis

•        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.*  

•        Explain ethical concerns that may impact your work on this case. 

*Note: If you are an international student, you may use your local or regional laws.