Thread by @VinSchiraldi

Excellent piece by @MarshallProj @carrollbogert & @columbiajourn @lynnellhancock on the vilification of youth attendant upon the racist #superpredator epithet. Never doubt how that unleashed a moral panic resulting in harsh punishment against kids. themarshallproject.org/2020/11/20/sup…

Although youth crime had risen during the 80s and 90s, John DiIulio's coining of that catchphrase was based on schlock research that didn't bear even the most cursory scrutiny. EG, he wrote that there would 270,000 superpredators by 2010 needing 150,000 more youth prison beds.

In this excellent 1996 @latimes oped, UC Berkeley Professor Franklin Zimring wrote "the only way 270,000 more of these mythical creatures will be terrorizing the citizenry by 2010 is if infants or toddlers start committing armed robbery" latimes.com/archives/la-xp…

Nonetheless, politicians jumped on board. @SenatorDole used the phrase in his 96 presidential campaign, same year that @HillaryClinton said "They are often the kinds of kids that are called super-predators—no conscience, no empathy...we have to bring them to heel."

@jeffsessions & @billmcollum named their crime bill allowing 13-year-olds to be incarcerated alongside adults "the Violent Youth Predator Act". Almost all states made it easier to try kids as adults. 120k kids were incarcerated by 2000, 10k of whom were in adult prisons.

The racial animus behind this all was palpable. DiIulio wrote “all that’s left of the black community in some pockets of urban America is deviant, delinquent and criminal adults surrounded by severely abused and neglected children, virtually all of whom were born out of
wedlock”

DiIulio was hardly castigated for this. Pres Bush 43 made him the nation's first "Faith Czar". 80% of the increase in youth incarceration were kids of color. When I ran DC's youth justice system '05-'10 I never saw a white youth in my awful youth prison. washingtonpost.com/archive/opinio…

The media played along giving saturation coverage to vilified depictions of youth. From '90-'98 homicides declined by a third but coverage of homicides on the three networks' evening news increased 473%. Youth made up 14% of crime but 68% of news/crime stories involved youth.

Youth homicides declined by 68% '93-'99, & were at their lowest rate since 1966, but 62% of the public believed youth crime was up. There was a 1-in-3 million chance of being shot in a school in '92, but 72% of poll respondents thought a shooting was likely in their school.

The public was spectacularly misinformed by the news media. 76% of poll respondents reported that they formed their opinions from what they saw on TV news or read in the papers, compared to 22% who did so from personal experience. latimes.com/archives/la-xp…

There's a long way to go but the news media is better now in my view, much less hyperbolic, much more nuanced, more diversity of voices. I think this has generally helped inform better policymaking. Youth imprisonment has plunged by 66% since 2000 although disparities have grown.

We still incarcerate 42k overwhelmingly BIPOC kids, 4k in adult prisons, shameful compared to other nations. This tweet chain reminds us of how ready our politicians & media were to vilify & harshly punish youth, so we shutter the youth prisons the superpredator myth built.