the author emphasizes that one juvenile accused of murder was "so brutalized as a child that by the time he was arrested for murder at age 14, he had tried to kill himself six times" (paragraph 6). In the context of this article, why do people do bad things? Do you think people's backgrounds or past experiences excuse thier actions? Cite evidence from this text, your own experience, and or literature, art, or history in your answer.

I think people do bad things mostly because of the past. My personal life proof is the story of my friend. He was a good and well-mannered boy in elementary school, but after being bullied, he changed a lot. In the end, after the holidays, he took revenge on them by beating them and began to mock them and other students at school.

quite an interesting way to teach topic sentences, because the answer to this question is the best definition of a topic sentence that one can present, it is as if answering the questions taught you how to do it, this is some real teaching, it is terribly well-done.

the topic sentence in this paragraph is:

topic sentences writers stay on track and keep a paragraph from becoming an aimless collection of sentences about an idea.

which incidentally tells you what a topic sentence should be.