ack to early infancy, according to the Heritage Foundation. A father'sattention to his son has enormous positive effects on a boy's emotional and social development. Deloach 2But a boy abandoned by his father is deprived of a deep sense of personal security. In awell-functioning family the very presence of the father embodies authority and this paternalauthority is critical to the prevention of psychopathology and delinquency . "The overwhelmingcommon factor that can be isolated in determining whether young people will be criminal in theirbehavior is moral poverty," Parker says (Parker 1996). Psychologists can predict by the age of 6 who'll be the super-predators. According toexperts, child abuse and parents addicted to alcohol ruins these childrens lives. Each generationof crime-prone boys has been about three times as dangerous as the one before it. Psychologistsbelieve the downhill slide into utter moral bankruptcy is about to speed up because eachgeneration of youth criminals is growing up in more extreme conditions of "moral poverty" thanthe one before it. Moral poverty is defined as "growing up surrounded by deviant, delinquent, andcriminal adults in abusive, violence-ridden, fatherless, godless, and jobless settings.The "super-predator" is a breed of criminal so dangerous that even the older inmatesworking their way through life sentences complain that their youthful counterparts are out ofcontrol. Super predators are raised in homes void of loving, capable, responsible adults whoteach you right from wrong. It is the poverty of being without parents, guardians, relatives,friends, teachers, coaches, clergy and others who habituate you to feel joy at others' joy, pain atothers' pain, happiness when you do right, remorse when you do wrong. It is the poverty ofgrowing up in the virtual absence of people who teach these lessons by their own everydayexample, and who insist that you follow suit and behave accordingly (Zoglin 19...
