A "Super-Predator" At Age 11

Los Angeles police secured an extraordinary court order allowing them to publicly name an 11-year-old boy who was their prime suspect in a crime -- despite state laws that protect anonymity of juveniles. The chief of police held a press conference to warn the community of the "dangerous and violent young man" police were seeking.

Police claim the 11-year-old boy and a group of other kids, kidnapped, raped and tortured a 13-year-old, tried to burn down the abandoned house where they had trapped her, and killed an 82-year-old woman next door.

If police are correct, the boy fits the description of Brookings Institution scholar John DiIulio's "super-predators," the small number of violent young people who commit much of the crime -- each generation of which is substantially more violent than the last.

A study of incarcerated male juveniles in California found that 94 percent were re-arrested as adults -- 82 percent for major felonies -- and 42 percent had more than nine arrests as adults in an eight-year followup period.

While most jurisdictions are moving to allow police leeway to name juveniles and punish them as adults at younger ages, the perverse effect of setting an absolute threshold is that it encourages gangs to recruit even younger boys.

An alternative would be to get rid of the age limit altogether and establish criminal responsibility based on the individual's ability to understand what he is doing and its wrongfulness, as we do in insanity-defense cases.

There are 40 million children in the United States under the age of 10, more than at any other time since the baby boom. People wonder whether there is anything that can be done to stop the potential super-predators among them before it's too late.

Source: Susan Estrich, "Violent Kids Can't Be Reformed," USA Today, August 8, 1996.

Teen Predator At Home

Middle-class parents of 16-year-old teenage predators have few options, suggests one frustrated father in Bothell, Wash. His son David doesn't really attend school, doesn't work and stays out all night with older members of his gang.

• David was detained three months awaiting trial -- for carrying his gang's drugs on school grounds -- but the judge let him go; and when his parents called the cops because he brought drugs home, the police said they might prosecute -- in a year.

• The state's Child Protective Services suggested institutionalizing him; but it would cost his parents $5,000 a month -- and he could walk out whenever he wanted.

• His girlfriend is pregnant; but until David is 18, his parents can't even throw him out -- even to protect their younger children from exposure to their brother.

The teenage child is a myth, suggests the father: Newton discovered the quadratic formula in his teens; violinists, chess players, swimmers and gymnasts all become world class by intense discipline when they are teens; and 17-year-olds have regularly gone to war. They also commit serious crimes and have children of their own.

Society protects them as juveniles, with anonymity and few consequences for their actions. What might help, he concludes, is a responsible emancipation program that would let parents cut their ties, and let those teens who won't work or go to school live on their own.

Source: Mark Langley, "My Son, the Teen-Age Predator," Wall Street Journal, April 2, 1996.

Snapshots Of Violence

One of the most powerful trends in 1994, according to journalists, was the rising demand for a crackdown on juvenile criminals. These hellish snapshots help explain why:

• In Chicago, a 14-year-old girl was shot to death by an 11-year-old gang member who in turn was found dead with two bullets in the back of his head a few days later; his suspected killers are 14 and 16.

• In North Carolina, a 13-year-old boy was accused of beating a 22-year-old female neighbor with a mop handle and then raping her.

• In Somerset, Pennsylvania, a 14-year was charged with hammering nails into the heels of a younger boy.

• "Youngsters used to shoot each other in the body. Then in the head. Now they shoot each other in the face," a Washington, D.C. judge told Time magazine.

"We are terrified," writes criminologist James Q. Wilson, "by the prospect of innocent people being gunned down at random, by youngsters who afterward show us the blank, unremorseful faces of seemingly feral, presocial beings."

Source: Nick Gillespie, "Arrested Development," Reason, December 1994, Reason Foundation, 3415 Sepulveda Blvd., Suite 400, Los Angeles, CA 90034, (310) 391-2245.