Reclaiming Our Children is a small, easy to read book, filled with valuable information about today's youth. In many ways, it is a frightening expose' of America’s growing cancer where children commit crimes, some very serious such as murder. This can only bring to mind the mass murders and then the suicide killing which took place at Columbine High School.
Dixon claims that our country is on the brink of losing the majority of its “youth to crime and moral/ethical decay.” The outcome: imprisonment. Immediately, what comes to mind by “imprisonment” is physical restraint in a jail or prison of some type. But physical incarceration, Dixon claims, is the end result of the spiritual and mental imprisonment that takes place early in a child’s life.
Mental imprisonment implies that a person is locked within the confines of their own way of thinking. Once this occurs, it is quite difficult to escape. It means that a victim’s mind is walled into a way of thinking which could have been otherwise. A mentally jailed individual sees his or her mindset as the way of thinking and without serious help, can never reach out to accept a more moral, ethical way of living.
The Columbine murders are an example. With a host of available weapons, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher. During their murderous melee, 24 others were injured before the two youthful killers committed suicide.
An after the fact study of these two young men and their backgrounds showed many troubling 
tendencies in both that had not been dealt with: one was considered a clinical psychopath, the other a very depressed man.
After reading Reclaiming Our Children, I feel Dixon would suggest that the mental instability that confined both of these youths was yet a symptom to a far more serious problem: spiritual imprisonment. A person’s spirit “is the underlying learned force that influences our way toward either positive or negative thoughts.”
Dixon states many times that all people are created in the image and likeness of God. As a result, the very earliest natural inclination as a new-born, our innermost nature, is to act God-like. What can alter that God-like nature are the influences of home, family, school, society, and government.
Article comments
1 - DHFabian
America collectively decided that our poor
are dispensable. We have been subjected to a steady drum beat of anti-poor rhetoric for some 30+ years now, via the media and political leadership. Is it any wonder that youth born into our anti-poor culture would have no sense of hope? By the time they reach high school, many have realized that there is no way out of poverty for them, no matter how hard they try. Every door is shut. The best students can earn enough scholarships for college, thereby working their way out of poverty, but by definition, most of us are simply average. By the time these kids become teens, they start realizing that they have no future, no matter what. There is nothing to work toward or for. The general public grossly underestimates the hell of being poor in the US today. The bottom line is that those who grow up poor today, in our post-welfare "reform" era, understand that (if they commit a serious crime) the worse that can happen is that they'll die, and they have no fear of death. Prison happens, and it's bad, but it's debatable whether it's worse than life on the streets.
People don't like it, and scream that "Poverty is no excuse!" So? That doesn't change anything. When every door is locked and there's nowhere to go, you take chances. They have no regard for victims who, after all, never had any regard for them or their families.