By Selwyn Duke
A six-year-old shoots his teacher in class, a 12-year-old fatally stabs her younger brother just before midnight, a 10-year-old murders his mother because she wouldn’t buy him a virtual-reality headset. This is just a sampling of our time’s heinous preteen crimes.
All three incidents occurred just recently, too.
Yet are these mere outliers and coincidences? Or do they reflect a troubling trend?
Homicide cases in American juvenile courts did rise by 35 percent between 2014 and 2018, the Department of Justice informed in a 2020 report. The spike was eyebrow-raising because it coincided with a period during which the incidences of many other types of crime were decreasing. Moreover, an increase was observed in both black inner-city and rural white communities.
Most of these murders, however, involved teens, many of whom were drug-involved. Yet there’s an obvious truth here: Our toxic, morally rotting culture is like polluted air, affecting all — including the youngest among us.
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