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Retro Report on PBS
Correcting the Myth of the Superpredator
Season 1
Episode 8
States are reconsidering life prison sentences of people who were given mandatory life terms as juveniles – a practice since ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. At the time, in the 1990s, a handful of researchers inspired panic with a dire but flawed prediction: the imminent arrival of a new breed of remorseless teen killers, so-called superpredators.
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