Increase in Youth Violence

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that on January 13, 2007, thousands of television viewers watched a late night news program in horror as two teenagers were shown beating a homeless man to death with baseball bats. The incident, caught on surveillance camera in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was the newest episode in a national trend of youth violence committed against the homeless. The writer maintains that by all appearances, the main cause of the Fort Lauderdale incident - and other nearly identical incidents - is boredom and an aggressive personality. Contributory factors include presumptions about the homeless, peer pressure, and a prevailing national culture of violence. This paper is designed to reveal these factors in greater depth and to shed some light on how their coincidence can bring a seemingly harmless adolescent to commit murder.

From the Paper:

"In all the recent cases of children assaulting or murdering a homeless person, the children's uninformed views and narrow understanding of homelessness facilitated their callous actions. As described by Michael Stoops, acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, these are crimes of opportunity, crimes that likely would not have been committed if certain conditions didn't coincide, one significant condition being the identification of the victim as homeless. In many of the recent cases of youth violence against the homeless, the perpetrators later admitted during interrogations that they chose the particular victim because he or she was homeless. In this sense, the crime is similar to crimes we traditionally associate with hate, such as those perpetrated against gays or minorities. Criminologist Brian Levine says that homeless individuals are the new vogue targets. Children choose the homeless because they assume they are vulnerable to attack and unable to harm their attackers in response. Because the homeless are a scorned population, children think that they can get away with these attacks."

Sample of Sources Used:

• CBS Staff writer. "'Bumfight' Videos Inspired Joy-Killing." 2006. CBSNEWS.com.Nov. 3, 2007. <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/28/60minutes/main2049967.shtml>.
• Fantz, Ashley. "Teen 'sport killings' of homeless on the rise." 2007. CNN.com. Nov. 3,2007. <http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/19/homeless.attacks/index.html>.
• Moore, Mark H. "Youth Violence in America." Crime and Justice. 24 (1998): 1-26.
• Weiner, Eric. "Florida Homeless Beating Caught on Tape." 2006. NPR.org. Nov. 3,2007. <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5156425>.
• Zimring, Franklin E. "Toward a Jurisprudence of Youth Violence." Crime and Justice. 24(1998): 477-501.

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