John Diciulio Case

Improved Essays
Written Assignment Two

1. In the mid-1990s, social scientist John DiIulio (and others) predicted that a frightening wave of violent “super-predator” youth would terrorize America starting around 2010. Why did DiIulio eventually back away from his prediction? (Hint: see chapter 4 and outside sources if necessary.)
The prediction of “super-predator” was due to district attorneys reported the increase in violent crime among youth. It is not hard to develop an opinion when you hear first-hand stories from the people whose job is to defend the very act that seems to be plaguing the community. Because these new “predators” appeared to be more “frightening than the previous generation”, Dilulio developed the idea that morally impoverished youth were more likely to commit heinous crimes.
“According to then-Princeton political science professor John DiIulio, an expected increase in the number of urban teenagers who were "fatherless, Godless, and jobless" would result in a bloodbath of
…show more content…
Some of the factors that contribute to this type of risk during a research conducted by Kenneth Didge and some of his fellow colleagues are harsh parenting, which I disagree with, poor school readiness and conduct problems.
My problem with these risk factors is that they suggest that only children that come from stern parents, low education and misbehavior are at risk for committing violent offenses. When there are documented reports that state that nearly all school shooters are white, rural or suburban, and middle class. These are some of the most horrific crimes against our youth; however, there are no “Dilulio” warnings about these classes of youth.
2. Research how other Western nations view firearms-related issues. In your research, include statistics on youth firearm violence in

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    “Just since sandy hook we’ve had more than 142 school shooting in this country. With 45 in the past year” (Gladwell). With crucial vile behavior from such young people, we are forced to ask ourselves “What has the world come to?” Gladwell explains, that nothing of this sort has ever happened until the year of 1996. Gladwell tells a story about a student who dresses up in all black, walks into school (with 2 handguns), and shoots the algebra teacher.…

    • 1046 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It has been said that the loss of a child is one of the hardest experiences a parent can go through. In the media, today we continually hear about school violence, particularly school shootings. Parents are having to bury their children, because of these senseless acts of violence. As a society, we are all looking for answers as to why school shootings continue to happen and how to prevent them from happening in the future. The best way to try and understand why school shootings are happening is to look at the common factors amongst the shooters.…

    • 1671 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Singal starts off naming a few shootings that happened that year. Then goes into details about the reasons young adults become shooters. Also that shootings happen. After she names the reasons she gives a few answers as to how to prevent shootings from happening. The purpose of her article is to explain why kids become shooters.…

    • 1155 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Great Essays

    15 July 2015. Dikel, William. " School Shootings and Student Mental Health - What Lies beneath the Tip of the Iceberg." 2012. Web. 15 July 2015.…

    • 1002 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Should juveniles be jailed for life? The young juvenile defendant wearing a tattered bright orange jumpsuit was glumly staring at his greasy sweaty hands. Beside him, his suave and professional lawyer was repetitively clicking his pen in nervousness. The judge was about to give the verdict.…

    • 1526 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Punished by Victor Rios, besides labeling, opportunity theory of crime is the most visible in the lives of the young men because for most of the participants, the only available opportunities for survival are through crime or other deviant behavior. In chapter 3, Rios follows two boys who each found their way into crime because of the lack of other options. In the case of Tyrell, with his father being unable to get a real job, Tyrell saw selling drugs as the only way to make money with which to support himself. “They chose to commit a crime,” Rios comments of the boys in his study, “consciously calculating the potential risk of arrest and incarceration. Many of the boys came to this assessment after believing that they had no other choice,…

    • 758 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The media initiated fear within the community, therefore stirring the pot for moral panics to take hold of the system. Juvenile crime rates were on the decline as data shows “over the past two decades, from nearly 200 victimizations per 1,000 students in 1992 to fewer than 50 victimizations per 1,000 students in 2011” (Curtis 2014). However, the media covered multiple stories of the violent youthful predator through portrayals of school shootings (Fowler 2011). Legislators, parents, and citizens were disheartened with the level of violence portrayed in the media.…

    • 825 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rampage School Shootings

    • 1619 Words
    • 7 Pages

    education system still remains a soft target for violence with guns so easily becoming in the wrong persons hands. President Obama explains that, "It cannot be this easy for somebody who wants to inflict harm on other people to get his or her hands on a gun. " Gun control advocates believe that stronger laws can prevent the needless loss of life such as the school shootings discussed in Rampage as well as the most current school shootings at an Oregon Community College that just recently happened in 2015 and a Washington School in 2014. The author’s overall purpose for the book is to put her years of training to good use and educate communities on what her research revealed about the organizational structure of schools, as well as taking a look at the dark side of small towns.…

    • 1619 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In response to a spike in juvenile crime rates during the transition into the Civil Rights era, states enacted tough punitive transfer laws that made it easier to automatically transfer juveniles to the adult criminal justice system, trying and sentencing adolescents as adults. Automatic transfer laws exempt certain crimes from being processed through the juvenile justice system by addressing the issue of juvenile delinquency based on irrational fears of a juvenile superpredator. Over the last several decades, the media portrayed the juvenile superpredator as gangs of urban thugs responsible for the majority of gun-related homicides and drug-related crimes nationwide. For example, nighty news would often report on bands of inner city adolescents as: fatherless, soulless, without conscience, beyond redemption, spiritually poor and were wilding their way through the streets committing all manner of horrific crimes [citation].…

    • 525 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Columbine Shootings

    • 486 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Columbine was one of the worst massacres this country has ever seen. It paved the way for a whole new generation of crime, school shootings. Columbine was one of the first shootings of its kind, and with that there is a lot we can learn from it. David Cullen spent almost ten years to research and write the book Columbine. By knowing the complete detailed truth about Columbine it allows us to see past the misconceptions to help prevent similar situations in the future.…

    • 486 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Historians agree that a generation “gap” was created in the 1950s between parents and teenagers, but not everyone agrees as to what caused American families to dismantle from its traditional cores and values. Some historians theorize that the introduction of Rock ‘n’ Roll is what caused the youth of that generation to separate from its’ parents and other adults. As J. Ronald Oakley proves in his essay, “God’s Country: America in the Fifties”, teenagers were not changing their values and morals, but instead were simply adapting to the growing changes occurring in America around them at that time. Within his essay he attributes some of the changes in America’s youth to factors such as the end of The Great Depression and World War II which led…

    • 1253 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Author Timothy Wheeler starts out his article with an incident happened at the Cleveland’s Success Tech Academy where four people were injured with no mortality as a result of quick elimination of the shooters. He moves on to point out the vulnerable areas of the ineffective school security and the gun free zone policy that makes school ground an easy target for psychopath killers. To prove his points, he gives us the mass murder of 1999 in Los Angeles Jewish day-care center that committed by Buford Furrow’s, and the raped and the massacre that happened between September and October 2006 in Bailey, Colorado which committed by Nickel Mines. He brings his point across that allows gun at school can be effective to stop the shooter from further executing innocent victims.…

    • 687 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With a Troubled past behind them, Teenage Delinquents turn to the only comfort that welcomes and accepts them: Motorcycles. Freedom and Rebellion is what’s waiting instore for them, a lifestyle they can relate to very well. Such way of life takes time thus, teenagers don’t become Delinquents over night. The decision of becoming a delinquent or even joining motorcycle gangs is issued upon events that take place during childhood. For instance, Child neglect, maltreatment, and sexual abuse are all events that could trigger this need for freedom and rebellion.…

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rios Gun Violence

    • 246 Words
    • 1 Pages

    In his article “Children Pay the Price for America’s Addiction to Gun Violence,” Edwin Rios, a reporter at Mother Jones, argues that the number of gun shootings toward children continue to spike up and leave them with the aftereffects for an extended time period. He supports this claim by first describing the victims of “more than 170 elementary, middle, and high schools.” Then, he makes a connection between the “lasting impact on mental and emotional well-being,” and how that can cause one’s behavior to become aggressive and even violent. Toward the end of the article, Rios reveals how guns take away the lives of children more than heart diseases with the increase of more threats and incidents occurring each day. Rios purpose is to call attention…

    • 246 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The main school of thought is on urban sociology, social disorganization and other concepts that explicate the crime rate in numerous neighborhoods. The school focuses on the relationship of high crime rate and the changes in the society. The major personalities associated with the institution are Edward Frazier, Edwin Sutherland, Florian Znaniecki, W.I Thomas, Henry McKay, Ruth Shonle Cavan amongst others. Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay were some of the major researchers in the Chicago school of criminology. Their theory of social disorganization gives an explanation of the increase of crime rate and juvenile delinquency.…

    • 639 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays