In 1994, the killing of an 11-year-old boy in Chicago by teenage members of his own gang triggered a national panic that violence was spinning out of control.
Princeton Professor John DiIulio Jr. had extensively studied the criminal justice system, and predicted that as the number of teenagers increased, crime rates would snowball into a national crisis by 2000.
He wrote up his thoughts in an article for The Weekly Standard in 1995 and coined a term that struck fear: “superpredators” – impulsive juveniles, lacking moral conscience, who would kill without a second thought.
The news media quickly adopted the term and fear became part of the national dialogue. To prevent the predicted crime wave, 48 states would eventually enact laws to crack down on juvenile offenders, making it easier to prosecute them as adults and impose severe penalties.
But even as the laws rolled out, juvenile crime rates were dropping. By the late 1990s, it was clear that DiIulio’s dire predictions were wrong. The juvenile crime rate didn’t double and then double again; it dropped – by half. The superpredator idea was wrong. But there was no quick way to pull back the legislative changes.
The revelation shook DiIulio’s faith in social science and rekindled an interest in traditional religion that led him into faith-based community initiatives. But his change of heart came too late to reverse the damage done by laws and policies that fell disproportionately on minority youths.