Today's enormous cohort of five-year-olds will be tomorrow's teenagers. This is ominous news given that
most violent crime is committed by older juveniles . . . Put these demographic facts together and brace yourself
for the coming generation of “super-predators.” [FN5]
During the early-to-mid-1990s, in response to the perceived threat of juvenile violence, all but three states passed
new legislation designed to make the juvenile justice system more punitive. [FN6] Subsequently, between 1993 and
2010, national violent crime rates amongst juveniles declined substantially. [FN7] Some politicians and scholars
have argued that juvenile criminal penalty enhancements caused the decline in juvenile violence. In this account, the
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