The superpredator panic that drove mass incarceration was false but irreparable

Evidence

The political scientist John J. Dilulio even coined the term superpredator to call attention to this new breed of criminal, as dramatized by the young men in the Central Park case. These were “kids that have no respect for human life and no sense of the future,” Dilulio said. They were “fatherless, Godless, and jobless.” For him, these were “stone-cold predators.” He even predicted that by 2000 “there would be a million more people between the ages of 14 and 17 than there are now….Six percent of them will become high rate, repeat offenders—thirty thousand more young muggers, killers, and thieves than we have now. Get ready.” … Of course, Dilulio’s findings were eventually proved incorrect. His data were wrong. There were no superpredators on the horizon. He even recanted his theory in 2001. “If I knew then what I know now, I would have shouted for preventions of crimes.” The social costs and the lives ruined, however, cannot be undone. (The Central Park Five were exonerated in 2002.) White fear is the danger. Not black people. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 212

Categorization

• XREF: Links to the reader’s past work on moral panics (Cohen’s panic conditions and the Islamophobia-as-panic material); the superpredator myth is a textbook panic driving punitive policy.