Dear Mr. John J. Dilulio;
May this letter find you in a state of reflection and renewed purpose. My name is Christopher Alexander Hunter, I am now 51 years old, a man who, as a teenager at the age of 18, entered a federal courtroom facing the full weight of a system partially shaped by a theory you once endorsed, “The Coming of the Super-Predators” and and op-ed you titled “Let’em Rot.” Those words were penned in the heat of a political and social moment rife with fear, and unfortunately etched themselves into policy, law and consequence. Today, I appeal to you not in bitterness, but in hope, in the hope that we may walk together through the corridors of truth and empirical reality to correct an enduring wrong.
1. A Theory Gone Awry: The Collateral Damage of “Super-Predators.”
In 1995, you wrote that a “new breed” of young criminals, who are “fatherless, godless and jobless” would unleash a wave of violent crime unlike any before. While the imagery was evocative, it was deeply flawed. Your theory was cited directly and indirectly to justify sweeping legislative acts such as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. this legislation was the largest crime bill in American history, which helped to solidify a punitive stance towards youth, particularly children of color, and fueled the mass incarceration crisis.
The super-predator thesis do not come into fruition. Crime among youths declined drastically in the years following its articulation. There was no “Walking Dead” like juvenile apocalypse. But what did emerge was a punitive architecture which locked children away many of whom, like myself were never offered a chance to grow into who we might become.
Empirical research has since resoundingly discredited the “super-predator” label. Dr. Laurence Steinberg, a leading developmental psychologist, along with Alexandra Cohen, has demonstrated that adolescents possess reduced culpability due to diminished impulse control, greater susceptibility to peer pressure and incomplete neurological development. In “When Does a Juvenile Become an Adult? Implications for Law and Policy,” 88 Temp. L. Rev. 769 (2016), Steinberg presents compelling neuroscientific evidence that undermines moral and legal basis of trying youth as adults.
In the same vein, Dr. James C. Howell’s “Youth Offenders and an Effective Response in the Juvenile and Adult Systems (2013), emphasizes that most juvenile offenders age out of crime. The theory of the incorrigible youth offender and the very notion you helped popularize is not only unsupported by data, but has proven devastating in application.
2. Youth Matters: The Historical and Legal Arc
This is not an “Eureka” moment, nor is it a modern discovery. The United States has long held a distinct understanding of juvenile justice. In 1899, Illinois created the first juvenile court, grounded in the belief that children are developmentally different from adults and should be treated, not punished.
In In re Gault, 387 US 1 (1967), the Supreme Court held that children are “persons” under the Constitution but noted with clarity that juvenile justice must preserve rehabilitation as its aim. As Justice Fortas reminded us, “the child requires the guiding hand of counsel at every step in the proceedings against him.”
In that same spirit, legal scholar John Waite once asked: How far can court procedure be socialized without impairing individualized rights?, (12 Crim. L. Criminology 339, 340). The answer, it turns out, is a delicate balance but one tipped too far toward retribution, in which has been proven tragic.
3. Personal Testament: A Life Shaped By Systemic Error
I was sentenced in 1993 under case number 93-CR-00079-001 (S.D. Ala.), a first time offender charged with federal carjacking and firearms offenses. No one was physically harmed, Yet, I was cast into a system emboldened by rhetoric like yours, to a system that viewed youthful offenders not as misguided children, but as monsters.
In July of 1992, a psychological evaluation concluded that I suffered from deep emotional and familial trauma, including the recent deaths of close family members, that impaired my judgment and development. I was not a “super-predator.” I was a boy in pain. Yet, society handed me not a therapist, but a cage. You wrote, “Let’em Rot.” But as the late Fyodor Dostoevsky warned, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”
Churchill echoed this declaring, “the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of the civilization of any country.” I respectfully ask: What does this say about our civilization that society embraced your theory and discarded the youth?
4. The Scarlet Letter “C”: A Life Sentence in Disguise
Even for those who survive incarceration, the afterlife of a felony conviction is a second sentence. One lives branded with the modern-day Scarlet Letter “C,” Convict, Criminal, Castaway. As Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in the Scarlet Letter, “it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing as the bottom.” In many ways, society’s hate-fueled punishment’s reflects a fearful love of law and order, but it is misplaced.
John A. Brilliant’s 1989 Duke Law Journal article, “The Modern Day Scarlet Letter,” explores how probation and parole conditions reproduce endless punishment. Humiliation alone is not redemption it is degradation.
5. A Higher Law: The Gospel of Compassion
The Bible, in Matthew 25:31-46, speaks powerfully to the treatment of the “least among us.” Christ did not say, “Let’ em Rot.” Instead Jesus Christ declared: “For I was in prison and you came to visit me!” “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
If your writings once inspired punitive policies, perhaps your voice could now help dismantle them. Jesus Christ did not assign final judgment to a criminal record. He asked that we love, clothe, visit and believe in restoration.
6. Toward National Redemption: Retribution or Rehabilitation?
There is growing national consensus that youthfulness must mitigate punishment. The Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons (2005), Graham v. Florida (2010) and Miller v. Alabama(20120 has affirmed that children are constitutionally different from adults when it comes to purposes of sentencing.
Today, states and policymakers are moving away from your former views. There is no evidence of public will favoring indiscriminate juvenile incapacitation. On the contrary, bipartisan support exists for rehabilitation, second chances and decarceration especially for young offenders.
7. A Plea To You, Mr. Dilulio
You are a brilliant scholar. In fact, I first encountered your name not in a crime compliant, but reading Dr. Ibram X. Kendi’s, “How to be an Antiracist,” and again through Michael Santos Prison Professors program. In prison, I have searched through the Law Library and read some writings of yours and about you, not to resent you any of it, but to understand the architecture of the system in which confines me.
You once wielded enormous influence. Perhaps it is time to wield it again but this time, not to predict predators, but to protect potential. To not let them rot, but to let them rise!
Respectfully,
Christopher Alexander Hunter
#05111-003
