Unfortunate language about minority youth using dog training terminology aside, the "superpredator" statement by Hillary turns out to be yet one more example of her embracing a wrong idea and using it to destroy the lives of those she claims to be helping.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-drizin/the-superpredator-scare_b_5113793.html
In my mind's eye I can still picture him. He was just 14 years old, baby-faced and lanky -- in that awkward, post-growth spurt phase of adolescence when a boy is just beginning to take on the features of a man and is outgrowing clothes as fast as his parents can buy them. I remember his smile -- it could light up the room -- and his deepening voice. I also remember the tear that rolled down his face when the jury convicted him of first-degree murder and the anguish that my colleagues and I felt when a judge sentenced him to 45 years in prison.
It was 20 years ago when I first met Derrick Hardaway in the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. He, along with his 16-year-old brother, had just been arrested for their roles in the murder of Robert "Yummy" Sandifer. Yummy, nicknamed for his love of cookies, was only 11, but had been the subject of a massive manhunt in the days before his death. A suspect in the murder of a 14-year-old girl, Yummy had been hidden by fellow members of the Black Disciples gang. When the increased heat from the police started to disrupt the gang's drug business, gang higher-ups ordered that Yummy be killed and dispatched the Hardaway boys to do their dirty work. Derrick's role was to lure Yummy to go into his brother's car with a promise that the gang was taking him out of town. Instead, the boys drove Yummy to a pedestrian tunnel on the South Side of Chicago. While Derrick waited in the car, his brother took Yummy into the tunnel where Yummy was shot and killed.
I was reminded of Derrick and all that has transpired in juvenile justice since our first meeting when I saw the excellent Retro Report short documentary The Superpredator Scare produced by Bonnie Bertram and Scott Michels in association with the New York Times. Derrick's case -- which is featured in the film -- helped to launch the so-called "superpredator" myth.
The "superpredator" myth was premised on junk science and inaccurate predictions based on demographics. 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 violence on America's city streets. These morally impoverished teenagers were different from teens of the past-- they were amoral, feral beings, stone-cold killers, willing to maim, rape and kill without a moment's thought. They were "superpredators."
