Sen. Daniel Moynihan, D-N.Y., told interviewers on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday said violence in America has little to do with race and a lot to do with how the breakup of the family has spawned a generation of "predatory" 14-year-old males who are a "threat to society."
"The breakup of family inevitably, predictably, and for reasons we kind of think we do understand, will lead to the growth of large numbers of predatory males," Moynihan said."That 14-year-old boy is a threat to the society," Moynihan said, and the source of "imitative behavior like drive-by shootings and car-jackings."
Moynihan said the nation is still in a denial phase, having become used to daily reports of what would otherwise be recognized as "barbarism."
But the killings of tourists in Florida may ignite the kind of public reaction that led to a huge public outcry and many new laws after the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre, he said. That episode of mob violence killed seven people, a toll that Moynihan said is no longer that unusual.
Dade County Juvenile Court Judge Thomas Petersen said on ABC's "This Week with David Brinkley" peer pressure was responsible for the crime that has enveloped America.
Because of a lack of guidance, he said peer pressure, and not rebellion against authority, leads young people to crime.
"Kids have to learn to say no to peers," Petersen said.
"They're not rebels without a cause, but conformists," he said.
Marvin Dunn, a Florida International University's criminal psychologist, agreed. He said America has become a "wimpish" society that refused to take care of its children or to punish them when they're wrong.
"We teach youngsters it's perfectly OK to commit crime . . . by giving them a slap on wrist," Dunn said.
Dunn said psychologists should admit that advice given in the 1960s about withholding punishment was wrong.
"We have to reinstate punishment in a serious way," Dunn said, adding that he supports a curfew for children under age 16.
Both Dunn and Petersen agreed that education should be made a top priority. But Petersen said some of the money now spent on juvenile justice should be diverted toward education.