Реферат: Super Predators Essay Research Paper What is

spend much of their time hanging out on the streets or soaking up violent

television programs and violent rap music; they have easy access to guns and

drugs, and can be extremely dangerous. By the year 2005 they will be teenagers,

a group that tends to be, in the view of Northeastern University criminologist

James Alan Fox, "temporary sociopaths…. impulsive and immature.” There

are currently 39 million children under 10 in the U.S., more than at any time

since the 1950s. "This is the calm before the crime storm," says Fox.

"So long as we fool ourselves in thinking that we’re winning the war

against crime, we may be blind sided by this bloodbath of teenage violence that

is lurking in the future." Nearly all the factors that contribute to youth

crime -single-parent households, child abuse, deteriorating inner-city schools -

are getting worse. At the same time, government is becoming less, not more,

interested in spending money to help break the cycle of poverty and crime. (Zoglin,

1996, p. 52+) Some Statistics on the Rise of Juvenile Crime · The number

of juvenile murderers tripled between 1984 and 1994. · Youthful murderers

using guns increased four-fold over the same period. · Juvenile gang

killings have nearly quadrupled between 1980 and 1992. · In 1994, eight

in ten juvenile murderers used a firearm, up from five in ten in 1983. ·

The number of juveniles murdered increased 82 percent between 1984 and 1994.

· The nation-wide juvenile arrest rate for violent crimes increased 50

percent between 1988 and 1994. [Source: U.S. Department of Justice] ·

Over the next ten years, the population of 14 to 17 year olds will grow 23

percent, and the current generation of juveniles has already brought us the

worst juvenile crime rates in recorded history. · Since 1965, the

juvenile arrest rate has more than tripled, and over the last ten years the

homicide rate has more than doubled among 14 to 17 year olds. · During

the 1980s, the white juvenile crime rate grew twice as fast as the black

juvenile crime rate, and from 1983 to 1992, the arrest rate for murder grew 166

percent among blacks, but also grew 94 percent among whites. The increasing