by Nina George Hacker

About the author: Nina George Hacker is the assistant editor of Family Voice, a monthly publication that promotes traditional and Judeo-Christian values.

In December 1996, Los Angeles police arrested a 14-year-old gang member on charges of dousing two 11-year-olds with alcohol and setting them on fire.

Time was, juvenile offenses consisted of truancy, shoplifting, “drag” racing, petty vandalism, or underaged drinking and smoking. Occasionally, a fist-fighting “rumble” made the news if one gang member pulled a switchblade knife on another. But killings were rare, and drugs were virtually unknown. Jump ahead to today’s generation of adolescents, whom Princeton scholar John J. DiIulio, Jr. characterizes as “fatherless, godless and jobless.”

As a result, says criminologist James Alan Fox, we are seeing a veritable “epidemic” of criminal violence by juveniles...