Study On Juvenile Psychopaths Term paper

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Study on Juvenile Psychopaths

What is the "super predator"? He or she are young hypercriminals who are committing acts of violence of unprecedented coldness and brutality. This newest phenomena in the world of crime is perhaps the most dangerous challenge facing society and law enforcement ever. While psychopaths are not new, this breed of super criminal exceeds the scope of psychopathic behavior. They are younger,

more brutal, and completely unafraid of the law. While current research on the super predator is scarce, I will attempt to give an indication as to the reasons a child could become just such a monster.

Violent teenage criminals are increasingly vicious. John DiIulio, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, says that "The difference between the juvenile criminals of the 1950s and those of the 1970s and early 1980s was the difference between the Sharks and the Jets of West Side Story and the Bloods and the Crips. It is not inconceivable that the demographic surge of the next ten years will bring with it young criminals who make the bloods and the Crips look tame." (10) They are what Professor DiIulio and

others call urban "super predators"; young people, often from broken homes or so-called dysfunctional families, who commit murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and other violent acts. These emotionally damaged young people, often are the products of sexual or physical abuse. They live in an aimless and violent present; have no sense of the past and no hope for the future; they commit unspeakably brutal crimes against other people, often to gratify whatever urges or desires drive them at the moment and their utter lack of remorse is shocking.(9)

Studies reveal that the major cause of violent crime is not poverty but family breakdown - specifically, the absence of a father in the household. Today, right now, one-fourth of all the children in the United States are living in fatherless homes - this adds up to 19 million children without fathers. Compared to children in two parent family homes, these children will be twice as likely to drop out of school, twice as likely to have children out of wedlock, and they stand more than three times the chance of ending up in poverty, and

almost ten times more likely to commit violent crime and ending up in

jail. (1)

The Heritage Foundation - a Conservative think tank - reported

that the rise in violent crime over the past 30 years runs directly parallel to the rise in fatherless families. In every state in our country, according to the Heritage foundation, the rate for juvenile crime "is closely linked to the percentage of children raised in single-parent families. And while it has long been thought that poverty is the primary cause of crime, the facts simply do not support this view. Teenage criminal behavior has its roots in habitual deprivation of parental love and affection going back to early infancy, according to the Heritage Foundation.

A father's attention to his son has enormous positive effects on a boy's emotional and social development. But a boy abandoned by his father in deprived of a deep sense of personal security, In a well-functioning family," he continued, "the very presence of the father embodies authority" and this paternal authority "is critical to the prevention of psychopathology and delinquency." (2)

On top of the problem of single parent homes, is the problem of the children whose behavioral problems are linked to their mothers' crack use during pregnancy. These children are reaching their teenage years and this is "a potentially very aggressive population," according to Sheldon Greenberg, director of Johns Hopkins University's Police Executive Leadership Program. What's more, drug use has more than doubled among 12- to 17-year-olds since 1991. "The overwhelming common factor that can be isolated in determining whether young people will be criminal in their behavior is moral poverty," Greenberg says. (3)

According to the recently published "Body Count: Moral Poverty

. . . and How to Win America' s War Against Crime and Drugs," a new generation of "super-predators, " untouched by any moral inclinations, will hit America's streets in the next decade. John DiIulio, the Brookings Institute fellow who co-wrote the book with William Bennett and John Walters, calls it a "multi variate phenomenon, " meaning that child abuse, the high number of available high-tech guns, alcoholism and many other factors feed the problem. University of Pennsylvania professor Mavin Wolfgang says, "6 percent to 7 percent of the boys in an age group will be chronic offenders, meaning they are arrested five

or more times before the age of 18." If that holds true, because there

will be 500,000 more boys ages 14 to 17 in the year 2000 than there were in 1995, there will be at least 30,000 more youth criminals on the streets. Between 1990 and 2010, there will be 4.5 million more boys, yielding 270,000 young criminals.

"The big destruction happens early," Heritage Foundation fellow Pat Fagan says. "By the age of 4 or 5, the kid is really warped. Psychologists can predict by the age of 6 who'll be the super-predators." According to Fagan: Child abuse and alcohol ruin these children. But the groundwork was laid three decades ago with the widespread adoption of birth control, which made the sexual revolution possible. It altered people's dedication to their children and altered a fundamental orientation of society. Sexual morality got unanchored

in the 1960s, followed by the legalization of abortion.

"Abortion is a very definite rejection of the child. So is out-of- wedlock births, as well as divorce," he says. "The [predators] everyone' s afraid of were abused kids. There's sexual abuse and alcohol, and just the general decline in the cultural knowledge of what love is. " In 1950, for every 100 children born, he says, 12 had divorced parents or were born out of wedlock. In 1992, that number had quadrupled to 60 children for every 100 born. Throw abortion into the mix, and the number shoots up to 92 per 100. (4)

John Dilulio asserts that "each generation of crime-prone boys has been about three times as dangerous as the one before it." And, he argues, the downhill slide into utter moral bankruptcy is about to speed up because each generation of youth criminals is growing up in more extreme conditions of "moral poverty" than the one before it. Mr. Dilulio defines moral poverty as "growing up surrounded by deviant, delinquent, and criminal adults in abusive, violence-ridden, fatherless, Godless, and jobless settings."

The "super-predator", as told to a Washington press gathering by DiIulio, is a breed of criminal so dangerous that even the older inmates working their way through life sentences complain that their youthful counterparts are out of control. He describes these teen

criminals as "radically present-oriented". Because their time horizon

may be as short as the next guard's shift, they have no capacity to

defer gratification for the sake of the future. When these "super-

predators" were asked by DiIulio or other inmates if they would commit

their crimes again, most answer, "Why not?" DiIulio also says, they

are "radically self-regarding incapable of feeling joy or pain at the

joy or pain of others." (7)

According to Dilulio, today's juvenile super-predators are

driven by two profound developmental defects. They are radically

present-oriented, perceiving no relationship between action and

reaction--reward or punishment--and they are radically self-regarding.

Nothing is sacred to them. They live only for what brings them

pleasure and a sense of power, placing "zero value on the lives of

their victims."

Ultimately, concludes Mr. Dilulio, only a return to religion

will restore to youth the sense of personal responsibility that leads

to moral behavior. He cites a growing body of scientific evidence from

a variety of academic disciplines that indicates that churches

ameliorate or cure many severe socioeconomic ills. "Let [the liberal

elite] argue church-state issues...all the way to the next funeral of

an innocent kid caught in the crossfire," he says. "Our guiding

principle should be, `Build churches, not jails'--or we will reap the

whirlwind of our own moral bankruptcy." (5)

DiIulio's "super predators" are born of abject "moral

poverty," which he defines as: The poverty of being without loving,

capable, responsible adults who teach 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 at others' pain, happiness when you do right,

remorse when you do wrong. It is the poverty of growing up in the

virtual absence of people who teach these lessons by their own

everyday example, and who insist that you follow suit and behave

accordingly. In the extreme, it is the poverty of growing up

surrounded by deviant, delinquent, and criminal adults in chaotic,

dysfunctional, fatherless, Godless, and jobless settings where drug

abuse and child abuse are twins, and self-respecting young men

literally aspire to get away with murder.

Scholars who study drugs and crime are only now beginning to

realize the social consequences of raising so many children in abject

moral poverty. The need to rebuild and resurrect the civil society

(families, churches, community groups) of high-crime, drug-plagued

urban neighborhoods is not an intellectual or research hypothesis that

requires testing. It's a moral and social imperative that requires

doing - and doing now. (9)

It can be assumed -quite logically- by the lay person that the

"super predator" is actually a young psychopath or psychotic. While

these terms have become largely interchangeable, thanks in large part

to Hollywood, there are distinct differences between the psychopath,

the psychotic, and the Super Predator.

British Columbia Psychologist Robert Hare, has done some

ground breaking research into the study of psychopaths and has found

that psychopaths tend to underutilize regions of the brain that

integrate memories and emotions. These findings helped support long

held theories that the destructive nature of psychopaths were

neurobiological in nature. But, aside from the neurobiological aspects

of psychopathic behavior: The psychopath knows right from wrong; they

are quite often charming, glib and impulsive individuals. They often

brag about grandiose life ambitions, but often lack the skills or the

discipline to achieve their goals. Psychopaths are easily bored and

crave immediate gratification. It has been found that psychopaths,

quite often, have very high intelligence quotients. When caught in a

lie, the psychopath will shift blame, or switch topics with no

apparent embarrassment. They do not form deep or meaningful

relationships, and often end up hurting people who get close to them.

While they are intellectually aware of societies rules, they feel no

guilt when they break them. (8)

While many of the aspects described above fit the profile of

the "Super Predator", there are some important differences. The

"super predator" are almost completely without ambition, they are

often of below average intelligence, and they do not recognize

-intellectually or otherwise- any rules of society. While psychopaths

and the "super-predator" both share the inability to feel emotion, the

psychopath can feign it to achieve a result, the "super predator"

seems completely incapable of even that. More interestingly, the

"super predator" is remarkably candid. They will more often than not,

admit not only to their crimes, but as to the why, and as to the fact

that they did nothing wrong and would do it again.

Psychopathy does not always -in fact quite the contrary-

manifest itself in criminality. In fact, a psychopath could be a

highly functioning and highly successful individual in society. In

contrast, the "super predator" lacks the intelligence or the "masking

capabilities" of the psychopath to achieve success outside of the

criminal world. (9)

The "super predator" is not psychotic. Psychotics are largely

out of touch with reality. They suffer from delusions, hallucinations,

or other disordered states. They are often found not guilty of crimes

they commit by reason of insanity. (8)

Today, especially in the inner cities, children, in the age...

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