SUPER PREDATORS….Schools are safer than they used to be, and Jeffrey Seals, a security guard at Montgomery Blair High School in Maryland, gives technology part of the credit:
Seals and Vice Principal Linda Wanner agreed that today’s kids are more serious strivers than those of the ’80s. They also said parents were more involved now in their kids’ school lives, more likely to show up promptly when summoned.
Why’s that?
“They’ve all got cell phones,” Seals said.
Really? Cell phones have made parents more responsible? Who knew?
The rest of the article is about why the predicted “super predator” crime epidemic of the 90s never materialized, and it’s worth a read. The basic answer seems to be: maybe because the crack bubble burst, maybe because of a good economy, maybe because of some other stuff. Basically, no one knows. After all, Canada’s teen crime rate is down too, so the cause probably isn’t anything exclusive to the United States.
My guess: the question isn’t so much why crime rates came down, but why they went up for a short period. Perhaps the 80s were the aberration, not the 90s.
