super preditors

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 Youthful The number of juvenile murderers tripled between 1984 and 1994.  Juvenile gangmurderers using guns increased four-fold over the same period. In 1994, eight in tenkillings have nearly quadrupled between 1980 and 1992. The number ofjuvenile murderers used a firearm, up from five in ten in 1983. The nation-widejuveniles murdered increased 82 percent between 1984 and 1994. juvenile arrest rate for violent crimes increased 50 percent between 1988 and Over the next ten years, the1994. [Source: U.S. Department of Justice] 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 Since 1965, the juvenile arrest rate has more than tripled,recorded history. and over the last ten years the homicide rate has more than doubled among 14 to During the 1980s, the white juvenile crime rate grew twice as17 year olds. 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 juvenile murder rate coincides with an increase in "stranger murders," suggesting juvenile predators are less discriminating in their While in the past most murders occurred between family members andtargets. friends, the Federal Bureau of Investigations recently...