A longitudinal study of adolescent murderers.

This paper is part of a project on the adolescent murderer. Briefly, it consists of an inventory of all adolescent murderers in the Greater Montreal area during a quarter of a century, in the period from 1950 to 1974. Although the project has been recently systematically formulated and pursued, it was always part of the McGill Clinic in Forensic Psychiatry's on-going research on homicidal processes.1•2•3 The adolescents investigated had either been followed through most of the 25 years or seen periodically, and others were contacted for the purpose of this research. Some were seen in the penitentiary, where they had been sentenced after being remanded to an adult court. Some were seen at the clinic after release from the penitentiary, and others had been seen within the frame of reference of the juvenile court procedure and disposal. We also had access to legal, medical and institutional documentation, and consulted with lawyers, judges and educators who had known some of the boys. We will give some statistical data on the group of adolescents studied, but our main concern at this stage will be to describe some longitudinal patterns of evolution of such adolescents as seen in cases published in the literature, and in our own cases.