1

Ghosts from the Nursery

Do Lawd, come down here and walk amongst yo people
And tek ’em by the hand and telt ’em
That yo ain’t hex wid ’em
And do Lawd come yoself,
Don’t send yo son,
Cause dis ain’t no place for chillen.

—PRAYER FOLLOWING EARTHQUAKE OF 1866,
CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, COMPOSED BY SLAVES

In the middle of the night, on May 11, 1993, in the rural Northwest, an eighty-four-year-old man was bludgeoned to death. Three teenagers, high on drugs, had been on a joyride, which by morning included stealing a car, robbing a convenience store, and murder. The youths first knocked on the old man’s door and then broke inside to use the bathroom. Jeffrey later confessed to striking the victim on the head with a flashlight that the man had given them to find their way in the dark. The man was then kicked by the youths as he lay on the floor. He was found unconscious the next afternoon by a neighbor, lying near the front door of the farmhouse where he had lived all of his life and where he had seen the raising of his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. He died several months after the attack without ever regaining consciousness.

The youths were identified by several witnesses as Jeffrey, age sixteen; Roger, age seventeen; and Roger’s girlfriend, Crystal, age fourteen. Both Jeffrey and Roger had juvenile records. Crystal did not. Crystal was granted immunity and was not prosecuted. Roger was convicted of robbery with a dangerous weapon and sentenced to twenty years, nine of which he served. After the victim died, Roger was charged with accessory to first-degree murder and sentenced to twenty-five years. He was released in January 2012, having served eleven years. Jeffrey pleaded guilty to the robbery and was sentenced to life imprisonment. After the victim’s death, Jeffrey was charged with murder, tried by a jury, found guilty, and sentenced to death. His case was subsequently commuted to life without parole; he was removed from death row and has continued to live within prison walls for the last twenty years.

He looks like the kid next door. Unassuming, he greets you through the prison visitors’ window with a shy but ready smile. He is nervous, speaks thoughtfully, and clearly appreciates your attention. His body and his mind move quickly. Anxious for approval, he pours out complete explanations of what he anticipates you came to ask, far more than you would comfortably request. You are a stranger to this boy, but you recognize your own kids’ mannerisms, language, interests. He is just days past his eighteenth birthday. He likes to sing and write poetry, which he shares somewhat hesitantly, glancing up often to gauge your reaction. His light brown hair is clean and well kept. His eyes are hazel and clear. Insights unusual for one so young permeate his stories. He chooses to stand apart from his present peer group, hanging out mostly with his cellmate, with whom he shares an interest in self-education and social reform, particularly of the criminal justice system.

A few years ago Jeffrey seemed like just another kid living in the backwash of an unremarkable rural community. A casual observer might have easily overlooked the predictably explosive mixture of life circumstances that heralded disaster for Jeffrey—to say nothing of his victim. Jeffrey’s story is one told hundreds of times daily in courtrooms across our nation. It is a story told by events, psychiatric reports, interviews with victims, witnesses, friends, and family. The quest for explanations in the aftermath of violence often delves into adolescence, into grade school and childhood. But the beginning of stories like Jeffrey’s goes untold. One chapter is nearly always missing—the first chapter, encompassing gestation, birth, and infancy. And because it goes unseen and unacknowledged, it repeats itself over and over at a rate now growing in geometric proportions.

We overlook this period in our search for the causes of violence because we believe that it is irrelevant, not only to this particular crime, but to later experience generally. The popular belief in the United States is that the baby, let alone the fetus, is exempt from thought and the capacity to record enduring experiences. Nothing could be further from the truth. This overlooked chapter of early growth sees the building of the capacities for focused thinking and for empathy—or the lack of these. From the time of late gestation and birth, we begin to develop a template of expectations about ourselves and other people, anticipating responsiveness or indifference, success or failure. This is when the foundation of who we become and how we relate to others and to the world around us is built.

So Jeffrey’s story and others like his become ghost stories. Accompanying this convicted murderer is the ghost of the baby he once was and the echoes of the forces that transformed that baby. As is true of most ghosts, these aspects remain invisible, at least to the naked eye. And in that invisibility lies the power of these forces to continue to haunt us.

Though he was just sixteen at the time of his crime, many would argue that Jeffrey was an accountable adult. When faces like his appear in the news, we see the adult or adolescent criminal and place responsibility with the individual, holding him culpable for his actions. We can readily dismiss the Jeffreys as criminals who deserve to pay their debt to society. There are procedures and facilities in place to contain and punish adults. That these people are costly to taxpayers, that their contributions are lost to society, and that their numbers are growing at an alarming rate are all issues that concern us.

But the truly terrifying and more complicated addition to this conversation is the wave of new young criminal faces in the news, such as the eighty-pound twelve-year-old whose chin barely rises above the table in a hearing room of the Wenatchee, Washington, courthouse. His thin wrists are cuffed and his ankles are bound with chains. As he sits listening to the prosecutor tell the story of his premeditated murder of a migrant farmworker, his legs barely touch the floor. Using handguns stolen earlier in the afternoon, this boy and several friends had strolled along the Columbia River firing at bottles and logs. When fifty-year-old Emilio Pruneda called from a nearby thicket to “chill out,” the boys circled the thicket and fired. Pruneda threw a rock, hitting one boy in the face. The boys fired more shots and then ran to a bank and reloaded the guns. When they found Pruneda lying where he had been hit earlier, one boy emptied the rounds from a .22 caliber semiautomatic pistol and a .22 caliber revolver into Pruneda. There were eighteen bullet holes in his body.

In May 1995, headline news introduced the country to Robert Sandifer, nicknamed Yummy. Yummy was an eleven-year-old gang member who, having shot a fourteen-year-old girl, brought so much negative attention to his gang that he was executed by them. Yummy was found dead in a highway underpass, shot in the back of the head. His executioners were fourteen and sixteen years old. Yummy captured the nation’s attention when he appeared on the cover of Time magazine in June 1995. Later that month in an interview with Patrick Murphy, the Cook County public defender, Oprah Winfrey asked whether Yummy and others like him had “slipped through the cracks.” Murphy responded emphatically:

There was no crack here. We knew—we should have known exactly what was going on . . . What you saw in Sandifer wasn’t a kid who fell between the cracks. You saw a kid that was born to a mom who had her first child when she was fifteen, who was welfare-dependent, who came from a family who is welfare dependent. . . . The grandmother was in her younger thirties when Mom had the kid at fifteen. Robert’s father . . . was in and out of the picture at best. When he [Robert] came into the system at two years and ten months, he had cigarette burns on his arm, his neck, his butt. . . . The sister was brought into the system when she was ten months old, about three months before Robert. . . . She had second-degree burns in her vagina, and the mother said that she dropped her on the radiator.1

Very young and generally undetected victims of trauma or chronic maltreatment who become very young perpetrators of violence are no longer rare news stories. And the growing percentage of the crimes being committed by these children are shocking in their cruelty and aggression: a ten-year-old who killed a nine-month-old baby by kicking and hitting her with shoes and a basketball until she stopped crying; a four-year-old who climbed into a crib in his grandmother’s day care center and stomped an eight-week-old baby to death; a ten-year-old who killed an eighty-four-year-old neighbor by beating her with her cane and then slashing her throat with a knife from her kitchen; four second-grade boys who pinned a seven-year-old girl to the ground during recess and tried to kill her for “breaking up” with their eight-year-old gang leader.

As in Jeffrey’s case, we don’t see the ghosts from the nursery in these stories. Because of the tender age of these criminals, however, as we look for explanations, we may look more in depth at the childhoods they have not yet left behind. It is this group of offenders, children twelve and under with a history of chronic aggression, who are forcing us to look earlier. For the majority of these early offenders, the records are clear: By age four they show consistent patterns of aggression, bullying, tantrums, and coercive interactions with others.2

The headline of a New York Times article on November 19, 1995, which reported a decline in the rate of adult crime, also warned of “coming storms of juvenile crime.” Professor John DiIulio of the University of Pennsylvania said that we are experiencing “a lull before the crime storm.” He cited the “40 million kids 10 years old and younger” who are about to become teenagers, the largest group of adolescents in a generation. He believes that there are more children now than ever before who are growing up without guidance, responsibility, or internalized social values.

Fortunately, the predicted crime storm failed to materialize. For juveniles, the arrest rate for violent offenses grew from approximately 300 to 500 per 100,000 between 1980 and 1994, dropped to 270 in 2004, and fell to fewer than 250 per 100,000 by 2010. Arrest rates generally fell for every age group and for all violent offenses between 1994 and 2004, especially among older juveniles (ages fifteen to seventeen) and young adults (ages eighteen to twenty-four). The declines in the rate of murder arrests involving juveniles and young adults completely reversed the increases seen prior to 1994, bringing murder arrest rates down to levels below those of 1980.3

The murder rate for all age groups in the United States has dropped over 50 percent since 1991, going from 9.8 per 100,000 people in 1991 to 4.7 per 100,000 in 2011.4 Violent crime (murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault) has dropped to levels not seen since the 1960s. This precipitous drop is attributed to a combination of four main factors:

• increased incarceration and length of sentencing;

• improved law enforcement strategies and tactics that draw on new technologies and advances in computer analysis;

• the winding down of the crack epidemic, which plagued the United States from 1984 to 1990;

• the aging of the U.S. population.5

However, it is unclear how long this downward trend will continue. The FBI’s Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report shows a slight uptick of 1.9 percent in violent crime in the first six months of 2012. Property crimes also rose 1.5 percent overall. While two of the four offenses in the violent crime category actually showed overall decreases compared with data from the first six months of 2011 (murders dropped 1.7 percent and forcible rapes fell 1.4 percent), the number of robberies increased 2.0 percent and aggravated assaults 2.3 percent. At a regional level, the West saw the largest overall jump in violent crime—up 3.1 percent—followed by a rise of 2.5 percent in the Midwest and 1.1 percent each in the South and the Northeast. The only violent crime offense category that showed increases in all four regions of the country was aggravated assault, which was up 4.4 percent in the Midwest, 2.4 percent in the West, 1.7 percent in the South, and 0.8 percent in the Northeast.

As for property crimes, all three offense categories showed overall increases: 1.9 percent for larceny-theft, 1.7 percent for motor vehicle theft, and 0.1 percent for burglary. Regionally, the West saw the largest rise in property crime: up 4.7 percent, followed closely by the Northeast at 4.0 percent. The Midwest was up 1.3 percent, but the South actually showed a decrease of 1.4 percent.6

While the first decade of this millennium saw a decrease in the crime rate (until 2012), the rate of incarceration in America continues to be unparalleled in world history. According to the International Center for Prison Studies, the United States is responsible for 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. More than 10.1 million people throughout the world are held in penal institutions. Almost half of these individuals are in the United States. From an American perspective, many of the countries we view as run by violent dictators actually deprive far fewer of their citizens their freedom. At 730 persons per 100,000 behind bars in this country, the percentage of citizens we imprison places us far ahead of the next country that uses prison to control it’s citizens—Rwanda, which locks up 595 per 100,000. Next is Russia, which imprisons 568 per 100,000, then Libya at 203 per 100,000; Iraq at 101 per 100,000; and Afghanistan at 62 per 100,000. More than half the countries and territories in the world have rates below 150 per 100,000.7

The 2008 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts indicates that more than 1 in every 100 adults in our nation are confined in an American jail or prison. For people in their twenties, that figure moves to 1 in every 53 people. One in 30 men between the ages of twenty and thirty-four is behind bars—but for black men the proportion is 1 in 9.8 The racial disparities in the data are startling. Black men are seven times more likely than white men to be incarcerated. Currently 1 in 15 black men eighteen and older is in prison. For Hispanic men, the rate is 1 in 36 and for white men 1 in 106.9 When the number of people on probation and on parole in the United States is added to the number of those actually incarcerated, the amount of people living under the control of the criminal justice system is staggering. Adam Gopnik wrote in a New Yorker article entitled “The Caging of America” that more than half of all black men without a high school diploma will spend some part of their lives in prison. More black men are living under the control of the criminal justice system (in prison, on probation, or on parole) than the number of black men in slavery in the 1850s. Gopnik states that more people are currently under “correctional supervision” in America—over six million—than the amount of people in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.10

Change is likely to be slow and driven by economic necessity. The elephant in the room is that much of the penal system has become privatized and developed into a major industry, gaining Wall Street investors and generating a large union of vocal employees, whose living is derived from what is called the “prison-industrial complex.” Human rights organizations are actively condemning this reality. A mostly black and Hispanic population is working for a pittance for huge corporations that make a great profit off their work.

The costs of our myopic incarceration strategy are rapidly escalating. The combined costs of corrections spending—prison, probation, and parole—have nearly quadrupled in the past decade, making it the fastest-growing budget for states after Medicaid.11 The economic consequences to education and human resources in many states are being dearly felt. State spending on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education. As of 2007, five additional states joined California in spending more on prisons than higher education (Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut, and Delaware).12

Essentially, our response to the burgeoning rate of crime from the 1960s to the 1980s was to become “tough on crime”—relying heavily on imprisonment. While the crime rate fell, and state incarceration rates also went down, sentences have become longer and an increase of the rate of incarceration at the federal level has occurred, primarily due to drug and immigration cases. Now the costs of such a crisis-oriented approach exceed our ability to maintain that response and are forcing the policy makers to look deeper at what else can be done to maintain public safety while not creating the unaffordable and inhumane caging of a huge proportion of U.S. citizens. In a letter from the Office of the Assistant Attorney General written to the chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission in July 2012, Lanny A. Breuer indicates that the AG’s office and corresponding elements of the system are well aware of this need:

And as we said in our report to the Commission last year, prisons are essential for public safety. But maximizing public safety can be achieved without maximizing prison spending. In an era of governmental austerity maximizing public safety can only be achieved by finding a proper balance of outlays that allows, on the one hand, for sufficient numbers of police, investigative agents, prosecutors and judicial personnel to investigate, apprehend, prosecute and adjudicate those who commit federal crimes, and on the other hand, a sentencing policy that achieves public safety correctional goals and justice for victims, the community and the offender. The federal prison population—and prison expenditures—have been increasing for years. In this period of austerity, these increases are incompatible with a balanced crime policy and are unsustainable.13

Some encouraging signs have emerged. From 2009 to 2011, the imprisonment rate fell in twenty-nine states for the first time in nearly forty years. The catalyst is clearly economic—states are running out of money. Many states are taking steps such as shorter sentences and better risk assessment, combined with treatment and diversion programs to rein in the size and cost of their prison systems. As a result, ten states reduced their prison populations by double digits between 2006 and 2011.14

JUVENILE CRIME DATA

The juvenile justice violent crime index for juveniles between ages ten and seventeen reached a historic low in 2010, down 55 percent from its peak in 1994. In 2010, 225 arrests were made for violent crime for every 100,000 juveniles.15

According to the CDC in 2010:

• 4,828 young people ages 10 to 24 were murdered;

• homicide was the leading cause of death of African Americans ages 10 to 24 and the second leading cause of death for all young people between the ages of 15 and 24;

• 784 juveniles under the age of 18 were arrested for murder, 2,198 for forcible rape, and 35,001 for aggravated assault.16

When it comes to juvenile justice policy, much is changing—with a big push in many states to move from a reliance on incarceration as the first resort when dealing with a juvenile crime to using incarceration as the last resort. This trend has been driven by a combination of factors, including escalating costs of juvenile prisons, dismal outcomes achieved with money being spent, and a growing body of scientific research information regarding adolescent development and rigorous programmatic evaluation to identify programs that are effective in putting troubled kids on a positive track. States like New York—faced with a cost per youth of more than $250,000 for one year in prison and a rearrest rate of 75 percent within three years—have undertaken major reform efforts in the past five years that focus on keeping kids at home and in their communities whenever possible, and only locking up those who either present a risk of flight or are a clear safety risk to themselves or others.17

The Annie E. Casey Foundation has long been the leader in these efforts to reform juvenile justice systems across the country. It launched its Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) in 1992 with five primary goals:

• reduce reliance on secure confinement;

• improve public safety;

• reduce racial disparities;

• save taxpayers’ dollars;

• stimulate overall juvenile justice reforms.

JDAI is now being replicated in a hundred jurisdictions in thirty states and the District of Columbia. According to the foundation, it offers “modest grant support to sites for training, planning and coordination, as well as an elaborate mix of technical support, staff training, resource materials and opportunities to learn from a growing network of reform sites.”18

Media coverage of violence—murder and rape, gang violence, serial killings, the murder of parents, children, and coworkers—treats violent behavior as if it suddenly emerges from a developmental void. It is a rare story that looks for the sources of this behavior in the child’s developmental history, particularly early history, before grade school. In order to understand the tide of violent behavior in which America is now submerged, we must look before preadolescence, before grade school, before preschool, to the cradle of human formation in the first thirty-three months of life. These months, including nine months of prenatal development and the first two years after birth (thirty-three months), harbor the seeds of violence for a growing percentage of American children. In the violence equation, in the stories of Jeffrey and each of the children described earlier, this is chapter one, the missing chapter.

The ghosts of children lost to rage and despair, overlooked or abused by a community unaware of their existence, do retaliate. These children—like all children—“do unto others.” It may be easy and politically expedient to ignore them or to close our eyes to the appalling circumstances of their lives while they are voiceless and powerless—little bodies tucked away where no one is looking. But these children—grown larger and angrier—are swelling the rising tide of violent young offenders in our communities. Rage-filled adolescents only seem to come out of nowhere. They come, too often, from the nursery.

We yearn for simple answers. When horrific details reel from television or newspaper stories, we grasp for quick explanations. We want to believe that we can separate ourselves from the infection. Poverty and race become easy scapegoats. But neither adequately explains the increase in violence, particularly not among younger and younger children. The answers are complex but no longer unknowable.

Historically, theories have abounded regarding the source of criminal behavior. Much of this discussion has been polarized by a pervasive and very human effort to reduce this quest to a single factor. The “nature-nurture” argument has raged for hundreds of years and has crossed many fields, including science, religion, and philosophy. The effort to account for criminal behavior—especially violent criminal behavior—is confounded by the complexity of human nature, to say nothing of cultural variables.

But we have made progress. We know, for example, that in spite of a clear role for genetics in explaining some antisocial behavior, there is no “crime gene.” Several studies point to the possible role of heritable genes in explaining chronic property crimes such as stealing, but no links have been found for inherited tendencies toward violent crimes.19 On the other hand, genetic deficits stemming from environmental causes such as prenatal exposure to alcohol or drugs do play a strong role in setting up violent behavior.20 By causing subtle changes in the organization of the genes of the fetus, the baby’s brain may be damaged, causing, for example, difficulty with focusing on learning or controlling impulsive behavior. These vulnerabilities in turn render the child even more vulnerable to negative environmental conditions such as child abuse or neglect. Genes may have a role in shaping later violent behavior, but environmentally altered rather than inherited genes are implicated. And in order for even those altered genes to have an adverse role in later behavior, they must interact with negative factors in the child’s environment. For example, during the early critical period of maturation of the brain, prolonged periods of intense stress may actually alter DNA, the building material of the genes.21

The understanding of the interaction between internal vulnerabilities and external risk factors is essential to understanding the story of Jeffrey and the plethora of young criminals surfacing in the following pages. This interactive process is even more crucial as we seek to understand adult violence. In a hallmark study of the genesis of violent behavior in 1989, noted criminologist Dorothy Lewis found that neither exposure to early violence nor internal factors alone predicts adult violence. She also found that the combination of one vulnerability with an abusive family was not predictive of adult violence. While each of these factors is a clear warning signal that a child may be on a course toward violence, Lewis found that adult criminal violence resulted from the interaction of two or more internal factors (i.e., cognitive and/or neuropsychiatric deficits) with early negative family circumstances. Lewis’s theory amplifies the new emphasis on the interaction between these internal vulnerabilities and negative environmental factors. In reviewing the medical histories of violent juvenile delinquents, Lewis found a significantly higher incidence of neuropsychiatric and cognitive impairments among the most aggressive offenders, including hyperactivity, impulsivity, attention deficits, and learning disabilities. Both prenatal complications and serious accidents or injuries appeared often in their histories. The parts of the brain responsible for judgment, impulse control, and reality testing are disproportionately impaired in this population, along with the capacity for empathy and the ability to accurately interpret the actions and intent of other people.22

This analysis of the biological and social variables that go into the making of adult violence places a whole new emphasis on the human brain, where all of the variables meet and where central control is generated for all of our behaviors. Dr. Bruce Perry of ChildTrauma Academy succinctly summarizes this concept by saying: “It’s not the finger that pulls the trigger, it’s the brain; it’s not the penis that rapes, it’s the brain.”23 As the brain and its functions emerge as the mediator of human experience, we begin to appreciate the crucial nature of physical, emotional, and cognitive care during the first thirty-three months of human life. As we begin to discover the previously unimaginable impact of the smallest insult to the brain at crucial times in development, we are beginning to see that much of what we have formerly written off as unknowable in origin, and therefore unchangeable, can and must be prevented. Violent behavior is a clear sign of systemic distress. If human life is to continue, our entire species needs to attend differently to our young.

Fifty years ago, Rachel Carson penned her classic Silent Spring. That book was an urgent warning by a field biologist who was distressed by the plight of eagles, peregrine falcons, and many songbirds that were quietly disappearing from the American landscape. Carson revealed an unseen and insidious threat to the entire chain of life. Through the use of DDT and other chemicals routinely applied in farming, forestry, and mosquito abatement, our nation was leading the world into destruction of the natural environment. Not only were pesticides poisoning our air, earth, rivers, and seas, they threatened the survival of our own species.

In spite of considerable controversy and an ongoing debate, Silent Spring penetrated the national consciousness. A spring without songbirds was a chilling image, and, in contemplating that grim prospect, we finally began to understand the true price of insecticides. Carson confronted us with our own passive participation in the destruction of the natural world. We now understand the intricate linkages that exist and the cumulative devastation that occurs when poisons are introduced at the front of the ecosystem.

Fifty years after Silent Spring, however, we have yet to understand that the same dynamic is at work in the human system. Toxic ­experiences—family violence, abuse, and chronic neglect, along with toxic substances such as nicotine, alcohol, and illegal drugs—are being physically and emotionally absorbed by our babies in record numbers. As a result of this systemic degradation at the beginning of human life, our nation faces a threat that is potentially as lethal as the effects of DDT.

As in the natural world, there are complex links between the quality of individual human development and the status of the human community. Infancy, a time to which our nation is blindsided, is a crucial developmental stage when an individual forms the core of conscience, develops the ability to trust and relate to others, and lays down the foundation for lifelong learning and thinking. The quality of the human environment is directly tied to each individual’s ability to love, to empathize with others, and to engage in complex thinking. By failing to understand the cumulative effects of the poisons assaulting our babies in the form of abuse, neglect, and toxic substances, we are participating in our own destruction.

Our ignorance of and indifference to the complex nature of infancy has significantly contributed to one sign of systemic distress that we can no longer ignore. Violence is epidemic in American society. It dominates our media, permeates our play, steals our loved ones, implodes our families, and claims a growing percentage of our young. Our response is to deploy the highest rate of incarceration the world has ever seen.

The Children’s Defense Fund publishes a yearbook entitled The State of America’s Children. Its 2012 edition reported the following:

• Every 1.5 seconds during the school year a public school student receives an out-of-school suspension.

• Every 8 seconds during the school year a public high school student drops out.

• Every 19 seconds a baby is born to an unwed mother.

• Every 29 seconds a child is born into poverty.

• Every 30 seconds during the school year a public school student is corporally punished.

• Every 47 seconds a child is abused or neglected.

• Every 67 seconds a baby is born without health insurance.

• Every 85 seconds a baby is born to a teen mother.

• Every 2 minutes a child is born at low birth weight.

• Every 3 minutes a child is arrested for a drug offense.

• Every 6 minutes a child is arrested for a violent offense.

• Every 21 minutes a baby dies before his or her first birthday.

• Every 1.5 hours a child dies from an accident.

• Every 3 hours a child is killed by a firearm.

• Every 5.5 hours a child is killed by abuse or neglect.

• Every 8 hours a child commits suicide.

• Every 10 hours a baby’s mother dies due to complications from pregnancy or child birth.24

An intolerable percentage of babies are now gestating in and being born into an environment perfectly designed to breed rage and despair. Violence takes many forms—physical, emotional, social, verbal, to name a few. It has many definitions and is to some degree a concept that varies with time and culture. For example, killing for God or country or ideological affiliations may be considered a noble and highly valued behavior. Killing as random vengeance is generally not. For the purposes of this discussion, violence is defined as behavior not condoned by law, which is intended to inflict harm on others, behavior that actively victimizes another person by an aggressive act. Perpetrators of unlawful violence fall roughly into one of two types: impulsive or premeditated. The great majority of violent crime committed in this country is of the impulsive type. Most of the research in this area is based on the study of “hot-blooded” impulsive violence. While premeditated, or “cold-blooded,” violent behavior has some roots in common with impulsive violence, it also develops from some unique causes. Whenever relevant, these two distinct paths of development are distinguished in the following chapters.25

While the causes of violence are highly complex and multifaceted, a growing body of scientific knowledge demonstrates that maltreatment during the nine months of fetal growth and the first twenty-four months after birth often leads to violent older children and adults. The poisons accumulating in the human community from widespread maltreatment of babies are only in part the toxins we already recognize—drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. The last three decades have provided us with research that brings to light a range of more subtle toxins profoundly influencing our children’s earliest development: chronic stress or neglect, which affects the development of the fetal or early infant brain; early child abuse and neglect, which undermine focused learning; chronic parental depression; neglect or lack of the stimulation necessary for normal brain development; early loss of primary relationships or breaks in caregiving. These are the precursors of the growing epidemic of violence now coming to light in childhood and adolescence.

We must broaden the scope of our conversation about violence. Infancy and toddlerhood are times of enormous complexity when potentials for favorable adult outcomes can be maximized, diminished, or lost. Through the interplay of the developing brain with the environment during the nine months of gestation and the first two years after birth, the core of an individual’s ability to think, feel, and relate to others is formed. Violent behavior often begins to take root during the first thousand days of life as the result of chronic stress, such as domestic or child abuse, or through neglect, including the prenatal ingestion of toxins. Even where violent behavior does not occur as a direct result of these stressors, maltreatment of a baby may lead to the permanent loss or impairment of key protective factors—such as intelligence, trust, and empathy—that enable many children to survive and even overcome difficult family circumstances and later traumas.

And so we return to Jeffrey. Through his story we can see that there are many kinds of ghosts from the nursery. Some result from biological factors such as head injuries or learning disabilities. Others emerge from familial experiences such as child abuse, domestic violence, or the impact of maternal depression or rejection. As children grow older, larger societal factors, such as chronic community violence, may compound the damage from earlier experiences. One factor by itself rarely creates antisocial outcomes in human development.26 As in Jeffrey’s case, several factors combine to produce those outcomes. But a majority take root in the nursery, where few people are looking.