When Children Kill Children

This title examines the role of political culture and penal populism in the response to the emotive subject of child-on-child homicide. Green explores the reasons underlying the vastly differing responses of the English and Norwegian criminal justice systems to the cases of James Bulger and Silje Redergard respectively. Whereas James Bulger's killers were subject to extreme press and public hostility, held in secure detention for nine months and tried in an adversarial court, and served eight years in custody, Redergard's killers were shielded from public antagonism and carefully reintegrated into the local community. Green links these differences to Britain's majoritarian democracy and Norway's consensus democracy in a title based on a wealth of original empirical research.