Television Man Is Crazy, Says We're Juvenile Delinquent Wrecks

New at Reason: Carl Horowitz plugs in the latest teen-hysteria sensations from the Left and from the Right.

Comments

[dj of raleigh]

> That?s why parents should provide more guidance, beginning with their own firsthand observation that youth is fleeting. homicide rate barely changed from 1945 to 1967;
the big increase started in the late 1960s,

[Shultz]

The latest Superbowl brouhaha is just the latest symptom of a huge problem.

The only reason multi-national corporations use sex to market to teenage boys is because of the demand side of the equation. There are just too many teenage boys that are physically attracted to females.

To combat this problem, rather than punishing the marketers, we should start punishing the consumers just like in the Drug War.

That's right, let's start putting male teenagers in jail, at least, until they aren't attracted to females anymore. We can use rehabilitation techniques and elementary school education programs too.

Hey, if it works so well for cocaine addicts, why not children? Of course, this will take an enormous amount of taxpayer money, but aren't the children worth it?

[thoreau]

I second Shultz's ideas. But I think prison is too harsh unless we couple it with rehab. Don't just imprison them for liking girls. Require them to undergo training where they learn to eschew girls.

I'm sure there must be some way to design a prison program that would wean boys off heterosexuality.

[dj of raleigh]

>rather than punishing the marketers, we should start punishing the consumers just like in the Drug War.

[SteveInClearwater]

DJ, what happened in the 'late 60s' (actually 1970) was that Nixon formed the DEA and began the modern version of Prohibition.

Reagan ratcheted it up in 1985 of course and it's been full tilt boogie ever since.

The U.S. has averaged over 1.5 million drug arrests per year for almost a decade now, with 85% of those being for simple possession.

This pace of course means 15 million Americans will be busted for drugs in a decade.

Each felony conviction creates another person having great difficulty in getting a legitimate form of employment and these days, a drug conviction of any kind (unlike all other forms of crime) disqualifies a person from all federal welfare programs...food, housing, education grants etc....

Each parent in jail for a non-violent drug offense means another single parent home where the single parent works 60 hours a week and kids well, they do what they want.

So, a steady creation of under-employable people combined with these same people not having access to many traditional social services means more dysfunctional homes....And this increases the attraction of illegitimate and illegal forms of employment, which then create '2nd time' and 'repeat' offenders who then qualify for even longer stretches in jail and more time away from family.

And the beat goes on.

A VERY key support argument for legalizing all drugs. Not only do we have the foundation thesis which demonstrates that Prohibition exacerbates any and every problem related to drug use/abuse, but now we add in the fact that Prohibition insures the creation of a social underclass, that in many cases would be otherwise law-abiding and more likely to remain intact as family units.

[jon]

What's most important is that we must never forget to blame the victims. Somehow we have to figure out just why these children aren't the wonderful citizens we tell them to be (sometimes over and over). While adults in this country always behave in an admirable manner, the children always seem to want to rebel.

[dj of raleigh]

> What's most important is that we must never forget to blame the victims.

[Alan Kellogg]

The writer G.K. Chesterton once noted, "Children already now about dragons. What fairy tales tell children is that dragons can be slain."

[MALAK]

Sure, all you need is some Red Bull and a Tech-9.

[JimInNoVA]

Then you graduate to Stacker-2 and an Uzi. Pretty soon you're doing Hydroxycut three times a day and slipping out back to plink with your Barrett .50 every chance you get. Red Bull is a gateway energizer man.

[Sleepy]

Red Bull. Never had it. What's in it?

[Jim Henley]

Props to Tim for a Mott the Hoople reference. Okay, I know Bowie wrote the song, but still.

[dhex]

so what exactly caused the drop in youth crime mentioned in the article?

if it aint the tv potty mouths and the evil vice city stuff and the welfare state didn't shink and the war on some drugs continued to grow?

[Don]

"DJ, what happened in the 'late 60s' (actually 1970) was that Nixon formed the DEA and began the modern version of Prohibition.

Reagan ratcheted it up in 1985 of course and it's been full tilt boogie ever since."

Doesn't quite explain why the crime stats started going up prior to 1970. And it doesn't explain why the crime rate among minorities (particularly blacks) went up much more than among whites.