Twilight of Authority

...And even if we could, we would seldom do much about it...

...And if you find the gun hidden under Junior’s threemonthold pile of dirty all-black laundry, just hide...

...Let me see if I understand...

...Like the two teenagers who terrorized Littleton, Colorado, and traumatized the nation last week, all the boys were white and lived in suburbs or rural communities...

...In recent years, inner-city public schools have tightened security and cracked down on misbehavior, often with wonderful results...

...Children of all demographic descriptions are raising themselves in America today, and these children will be a bit less darling and a bit more dangerous so long as they have neither decent on-the-job parents nor other responsible adult authorities present every single day of their lives...

...If Junior’s a lethargic loner, hide the cat...

...is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution...

...The study found that 11 percent of the abused or neglected children had a juvenile or adult arrest for a violent crime—as did 8 percent of those who suffered no abuse or neglect...

...The list of risk factors scientifically associated with criminal violence is long, changing, stubbornly probabilistic, and woefully hard to manipulate to achieve desirable outcomes, whether via public policy or other means...

...One thing that research published over the last 15 years has established beyond a reasonable doubt, however, is that childhood abuse and neglect increase the odds of future violence...

...It is nonetheless true that most kids affected by most risk factors—regardless of race, creed, or socioeconomic status and including kids who look, sound, and act weird, troubled, or scary—are more likely to become quiet CPAs than they are to become career criminals or cold-blooded killers...

...Broadly speaking, as the subpopulation of teens exposed to factors known to increase the marginal propensity to violence grows, we might expect the incidence of those rare youths who become seriously violent—the statistical “outliers”— also to grow...

...Honest experts can endlessly debate the macrosocial trends relevant to such multivariate phenomena as youth violence...

...Adult villagers, he stressed, did not hesitate a moment before kindly but firmly correcting another person’s child or scolding an abusive parent...

...The veteran school psychologist whose training, common sense, and intuition tell her that a particular sophomore is a time bomb is supposed to do—what...

...And when is the last time you so much as looked crosswise at somebody else’s monstrously ill-behaved toddler or teenager, let alone opened your mouth about the child’s offensive dress or anti-social demeanor...

...Public schools won’t stop dangerous outliers, either...

...It reminded me of the oneforall blue-collar ethnic Philadelphia neighborhood where I grew up—a mother watching behind every curtain and a father behind every door...

...But increase it by how much...

...We can attempt to counteract the trend by supporting anti-violence education programs, restrictions on gun sales, faith-based youth outreach, or whatever else we think might do the most to prevent the few dangerous outliers from eventually harming us and themselves...

...This school violence was perpetrated by at least seven boys, one age 11, one age 13, two age 14, one age 15, one age 16, and one age 18...

...The late great University of Pennsylvania criminologist Marvin E. Wolfgang was the first to document that a small fraction of boys is responsible for a large fraction of violent crimes...

...Dangerous outliers, whether they reside in two-parent middle-class suburbs or fatherless welfaredependent cities, are able to behave dangerously because their parents are not ready, willing, or able to control what they do...

...You name it...

...But these incidents differ widely with respect to everything from the killers’ motivations to their relationships with parents...

...Prisoner surveys justify the headline “Over 80 percent of Prisoners, Like Over 80 percent of All Americans, Have No History of Physical or Sexual Abuse...

...The truth is that it is not possible, either for the small but spectacular set of recent school-violence cases or for vicious acts of youths generally, to isolate the causal influence of any given variable...

...Rather, he marveled at the villagers’ “moral affluence,” at their propensity to “teach morality” in private as well as in public...

...Absence of fathers...

...In particular, psychologist-psychiatrist-counselorwhatevers spoke authoritatively about certain “warning signs” which parents, teachers, and other adults can reliably use to spot (and stop...

...a Pearl, Mississippi, 16-year-old was convicted of murdering his mother before shooting nine classmates, assisted, police believe, by two other boys...

...Write a report and file it, call his parents, notify the school board—and get fired or sued or both...

...and so on to Littleton...

...Access to guns...

...Another study compared the arrest records of 908 persons who had experienced substantiated abuse or neglect before the age of 12 with 667 others with no history of maltreatment...

...But we nonjudgmental 1990s Americans do not want to monitor other people’s kids, and it’s absurd to pretend the parents of a child who makes a profession of hating or harming others need a checklist of “warning signs...

...Police charged a Fayetteville, Tennessee, high school honor student with fatally firing on a boy who dated his ex-girlfriend...

...But if he’s instead an energetic joiner of a creepy crowd, you should also hide the cat...

...Character abhors a vacuum...

...He was also among the first to warn about the “subculture of violence” among America’s youth...

...But suburban and rural schools have expanded students’ opportunities for “self-expression,” often to the point where drugs are openly traded, thugger-mugger wannabes routinely disrupt classes, and older kids seriously hassle or hurt younger kids on school buses, all with impunity...

...Whether in middleclass rural towns or poor inner cities, the obstacles to getting a child-specific grip on youth violence are not merely intellectual but legal and social...

...This no-timeformourning medium must have its message, and its message about the Columbine High School bloodbath was on balance reassuring...

...A longitudinal study of 1,000 seventh and eighth-grade students found that 70 percent of those who were victims of maltreatment before age 12 reported committing violent acts—as did 56 percent who were not maltreated...

...The Communist state’s draconian punishments were hardly a major factor, for the relatively crime-free existence of these people predated it...

...Thus, the television expert who asserts that “abuse makes today’s child twice as likely to be tomorrow’s violent offender,” or the government research agency that headlined its latest prisoner survey “Prisoners Report High Rates of Physical and Sexual Abuse,” has scientific legs to stand on...

...Contributing editor John J. DiIulio Jr...

...an Edinboro, Pennsylvania, eighth-grader was charged with killing his science teacher at a graduation party...

...a sullen or surly 16-year-old who is on his way to becoming a suicidal-homicidal psychopath...

...Consult a few of the best studies published in the 1990s...

...Even before Littleton’s bodies were cold or its police investigation begun, the tragedy-mongering national media broadcast instant analyses...

...Near the end of his life, he spoke and wrote to me about his research in certain Chinese villages that had remarkably low rates of crime, delinquency, violence, and recidivism...

...Cycle of violence” research found that 16 percent of children who experienced physical violence, versus 8 percent of those who suffered no violence (either physical or sexual), were later arrested for violent crimes...

...Or, if you find the cat strangled, hide the gun...

...But we can rarely explain or forecast individual propensities to youth violence...