Customer Reviews

Superpredators

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From Library Journal July, 1999 "Superpredator" is the chilling name currently given to the most severe juvenile offenders. Can they be saved? Is it right to lock them away for life? What went wrong? Elikann, an attorney, Court TV commentator, and chair of the Criminal Justice Section of the Massachusetts Bar Association, writes that these youths can indeed be helped, offering a 15-point plan based on intervention, strengthening families, rehabilitation, and role models. Chapter 5, which eerily connects with the reasons behind the Littleton shootings, merits extra attention. Elikann argues that there is no such thing as a motiveless crime and deals with the role shame and disrespect play in retribution. This book is well researched, straightforward, and unforgettable. Buy it, promote it, use it in discussion groups. Recommended for all libraries.

This author tells us that our clinical legalistic approach to solving the problems of juvenile crime (of basically "nipping the bad seed in the bud before it can ripen and become a super predator and then spew its evil fruits back onto society") has not worked. Building bigger and stronger prisons for younger and younger inmates may stimulate the economy of small mostly lily-white communities, but it does next to nothing to stem the tide of new more vicious criminals, (thought to be mostly from the inner cities). And although he is correct in pointing (in passing) to parenting as the epicenter of the problem, I believe he has failed to "skin that onion back" one level further to the society at large, where ultimately all of the root causes lie. Only at this next level of analysis, where poorer parenting arises, can the context of tableau of causes be examined more closely.

It is a shame that the author did not move his social microscope inward to this next societal level of magnification, for one does not have to examine it too closely to see that the root of this "altered and greatly diminished parental context" is the rapidly downward spiraling of the American family: fewer parents in the home, more single female headed households, a precipitous decline in the U.S. standard of living, a failing public education system, no healthcare, a continuing resistance to investing taxes in social programs and thus an end to the notion of "the common welfare" or a "common good," as referenced on par with providing for national security, in our Constitution.

But perhaps more important than all of these changes is the new American ethos of "Greed is good, and I want mine, now." We find this new ethos dominating business (Wall Street is a worse case example of it, but also the trends show up in outsourcing, offshore bank account, corrupting and corruptible politicians, predatory lending and lobbying, Hollywood, etc.). We find it in the home as well as in the streets, and in each it multiplies in a chain reaction like an out of control virus -- that is, with a vengeance. And surprisingly we even find this ethos in the Churches: the last bastion of instilling values to the young. Couple these changes with a culture that is racist at its core and worships guns and violence (as the first rather than the last resort) to interpersonal problem-solving, and there is little left to talk about when it comes to the causes of crimes by our children? They are simply rehearsing what they have been taught by both indirect and direct examples. Wealth may not trickle down, but bad behavior and incivility always does: directly to our children.

Somehow, this book in an "inverted attempt" to defend our children, skips over this much richer context of root causes as if they did not exist at all; as if our society were just another "Black box." We may indeed treat our own behavior as if it was a black box, but to our kids it is not a black box at all. To them it is exhibit number one, for they don't miss a single beat of it. They mimic and model everything we do (or think we'll do). They mimic the hatred we have in our hearts: our blind spots are their playground.

That is how we got to this point in time. That is what American history is all about. That is exactly what we mean by "being a good role model," isn't it? But most of the modeling occurs in the background, and in the way we structure the unfair rules of society, and then in the way we "pretend not to know that we have done so?" Our kids thus are not supposed to see, or get the fact that we are in fact moral pygmies: inhuman, racist hypocrites, right?

Wrong, they do get it, especially those who are on the receiving end of it, or who may have friends who are on the receiving ends of it, or who just don't want to be a part of a societal farce. As but one example of how these blind spots are magnified and then projected back unto society, the reader should turn to pages 114-115. There we discover that although young African Americans commit exactly the number of crimes they represent as a percentage of the population (13%). Yet 26% of all arrests are African American; 49% of those arrested for violent crimes are African American; and 52% of juvenile cases waived to adult court are African American, and most of these are for drug offenses. Whites are only waived to adult court for violent crimes. But as if this level of systemic bias were not enough, the last paragraph (on page 114), which I include verbatim here, provides the kicker:

"Nowhere was this more apparent than in the war on drugs. African Americans use drugs at the same rate as whites per their percentage of the population. In other words, they represent approximately 13 percent of the population and approximately 13 percent of all drug users. Yet they comprise 35 percent of all arrests for drug possession, 55 percent of all convictions and 74 percent of all prison sentences."(!)

Our children see these blind spots, even when we pretend not to see them ourselves; and once they do they learn that our system has no moral integrity. And when that happens, our society devolves into a kind of moral anarchy of the mind: One half of our society is in denial, pretending not to know that injustice erodes the foundation of our society across the board, and not just on the ground where those targeted stand. The other half knows that the system is morally corrupt at its core (because their lives are a product of its incessant unfairness), and thus has no regard for its rules, which to them are arbitrary and unjust.

The black box, the blind spots, the collective lies and denial, the structural violence and injustice, eventually wears down even a well-intentioned society and renders it into little more than an incubator of hatred, greed, mean-spiritedness and violence (structural and otherwise).

Juvenile crime then is just one of the many fruits of a morally bankrupt society: nothing more, nothing less. The only way to end crime in America (juvenile and otherwise) is to end the culture of blind spots, open up the black box, of which racial injustice will be the first item to fall out of it. All else is just "pretty talk," rationalizations that feed the hungry beast of hatred, greed and violence. Still there is a lot that is thought provoking in this book. Five stars.

I highly recommend that this book be read by any person interested in solving the problems of youth crime. In this excellent, yet disturbing, book, Elikann discusses many relevant topics relating to, as the subtitle of the book describes, the "demonization" of our children by the law.

In exploring these topics, Elikann does not rely on his own opinions. He appears to have carefully researched the subject of juvenile crime and punishment and is evenhanded in his presentation of substantive quotes from many well-respected sources, representing opinions from all shades of the political spectrum.

I would make it a law that this book be read by every member of Congress and every member of every State Legislature BEFORE being allowed to vote on any bill that might impact juveniles. Maybe, these lawmakers would understand that the way to solve juvenile crime is not to declare war on juveniles, but to declare war on the causes of juvenile crime - poverty, ignorance, and abuse.