Super Predators Essay Research Paper What is

Super Predators Essay, Research Paper

What is the "super predator". They are young hypercriminals who are

committing acts of violence of unprecedented coldness and brutality. This newest

phenomenon in the world of crime is perhaps the most dangerous challenge facing

society and law enforcement ever. While psychopaths are not new, this breed of

super criminal exceeds the scope of psychopathic behaviour. They are younger,

more brutal, and completely unafraid of the law. While current research on the

super predator is scarce, I will attempt to give an indication as to the reasons

a child could become just such a monster. Violent teenage criminals have become

increasingly vicious. John DiIulio, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at

Princeton University, says, ⌠The difference between the juvenile criminals

of the 1950s and those of the 1970s and early 1980s was the difference between

the Sharks and the Jets of West Side Story and the Bloods and the Crips. It is

not inconceivable that the demographic surge of the next ten years will bring

with it young criminals who make the Bloods and the Crips look tame."

(Bennett, DiIulio, & Walters, 1996, p. 17). They are what Professor DiIulio

and others call urban "super predators"; young people, often from

broken homes or so called dysfunctional families, who commit murder, rape,

robbery, kidnapping, and other violent acts. These emotionally damaged young

people, often are the products of sexual or physical abuse. They live in an

aimless and violent present; have no sense of the past and no hope for the

future; they commit unspeakably brutal crimes against other people, often to

gratify whatever urges or desires drive them at the moment and their utter lack

of remorse is shocking. Studies reveal that the major cause of violent crime is

not poverty but family breakdown, specifically the absence of a father in the

household. Today, one-fourth of all the children in North America live in

fatherless homes. This adds up to 19 million children without fathers. In

comparison to children who live in two parent homes, these children will be

twice as likely to drop out of school, twice as likely to have children out of

wedlock, and they stand more than three times the chance of ending up in

poverty, and almost ten times more likely to commit violent crime and ending up

in prison. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, reported that the

rise in violent crime over the past 30 years runs directly parallel to the rise

in fatherless families. In the United States, according to the Heritage

Foundation, the rate for juvenile crime is closely linked to the percentage of

children raised in single-parent families. While it has long been thought that

poverty is the primary cause of crime, the facts simply do not support this

view. Juvenile criminal behaviour has its roots in habitual deprivation of

parental love and affection going back to early infancy. A father’s attention to

his son has enormous positive effects on the child’s emotional and social

development. A young boy abandoned by his father is deprived of a deep sense of

personal security. In a well-functioning family the presence of the father

embodies authority and paternal authority is critical to the prevention of

psychopathology and delinquency. In addition to the problem of single parent

homes, is the problem of the children whose behavioural problems are linked to

their mothers’ drug use during pregnancy. Children reaching their teenage years

could result in a potentially aggressive population. Drug use has more than

doubled among 12 to 17year olds since 1991. "The overwhelming common factor

that can be isolated in determining whether young people will be criminal in

their behaviour is moral poverty". (Worsham, James-Blakely, and Stephen,

1997, p 24) According to the recently published "Body Count: Moral Poverty

. . . and How to Win America’ s War Against Crime and Drugs," a new

generation of "super-predators, " untouched by any moral inclinations,

will hit America’s streets in the next decade. John DiIulio, the Brookings

Institute fellow who co-wrote the book with William Bennett and John Walters,

calls it a "multivariate phenomenon, " meaning that child abuse, the

high number of available high-tech guns, alcoholism and many other factors feed

the problem. University of Pennsylvania professor Mavin Wolfgang says, "6

percent to 7 percent of the boys in an age group will be chronic offenders,

meaning they are arrested five or more times before the age of 18." If that

holds true, because there will be 500,000 more boys ages 14 to 17 in the year

2000 than there were in 1995, there will be at least 30,000 more youth criminals

on the streets. Between 1990 and 2010, there will be 4.5 million more boys,