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Xiaozhou Zhao
Professor Landrus
ENGL 101X
18 Oct. 2015

Who Is the Serious, Violent, Habitual Offender?: Rhetorical

Analysis
When it comes to analyzing juvenile delinquency and reforming the
juvenile system, many of the lawyers and legal practitioners struggle to
define serious, violent, habitual juvenile offender accurately. Although
the government has enacted various regulations and policies to the
reform juvenile system for decades, they have actually neglected a
particular, tiny segment of the population of juvenile offenders. In his
speech Who is The Serious, Violent, Habitual Offender? Andrew H.
Vachss, a practicing attorney in New York City and the author of The Life
Style Violent Juvenile (1979), makes a focused argument on life-style
violent juvenile in our society, analyzing the origin, characteristics and
severity of them. By opening a brand new field in legal profession, he calls
for the attention of both legal practitioners and the public on this
neglected, serious issue. In his speech, Vachss utilizes strong rhetorical
strategies to build up the exigence of the issue and target the attention of
the audience to the problems. Specifically, he achieves this by using logos
including statistics and data for appealing logic. He also uses ethos,
showing the credibility through his professional experiences dealing with
life-style violent juvenile. Besides, Vachss imposes great pathos on his
speech by establishing a character kid representing the serious, violent,

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habitual juvenile offender and telling his audience the kids story vividly.
Last but not least, he has a well-organized arrangement of his long speech
by raising relevant questions between different parts of the speech,
attracting the mind of audience as well.
Prior to exploring the writing techniques utilized by the author, we are
supposed to get to know the rhetorical situation of the speech by
analyzing T.R.A.C.E of this piece. Vachss straightforwardly points out the
failure of both government and legislation on dodging the issue of
serious, violent, habitual juvenile offender. He calls for an immediate
action on rehabilitating those life-style violent juvenile. The author writes
for a large audience, and specifically aims his argument towards legal
practitioners, especially those who have higher power. This audience
includes legislation and government, because Vachss intends to remind
them of the significance of caring for life-style violent offenders and
persuade them to take actions rather than evading their responsibility.
Vachss successfully shows great exigence by describing the group
serious, violent, habitual juvenile offenders as a kid who kills an elderly
woman without showing any empathy or remorse. By presenting the kids
daily life, (which is full of cruelty and violence towards the audience) the
author shows the urgency of reforming the juvenile system to cope with
life-style violent juvenile.
One of the highlights of the speech is the implementation of stasis
theory throughout the whole piece. Briefly scanning through the whole
speech we could get the major information quite easily from the author by
simply following the questions in bold, establishing a great arrangement.

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Additionally, more detailed stasis supporting the argument is found in
nearly every paragraph. For instance, Vachss brings up the question such
as, What are the role models for these offenders?, Where do these
young people come from? and Can we individualize the offender? to
explain the definition of life-style violent juvenile to the audience. He also
explores the cause of juvenile delinquency and finds the value of
individualizing life-style violent offenders. By answer these questions
himself in his speech, the author shows the depth of his argument well.
In order to persuade the audience through logical capacity and
consistency, Vachss uses the rhetorical appeal of logos. Though low in
quantity, the statistics and data in the whole speech are highly effective
to illuminate the issue. In his speech, Vachss does not merely use the
statistics and data to support his own argument; he also uses the same
statistics and data to present a different angle to the problem. In this, he
refutes the credibility of others research. The author states, Allen Breed
has quoted some scary statistics. He has said that twentyfour percent of
all violent crime was committed by people under eighteen years of age.
But he didn't say that twentyfour percent of all criminals are under
eighteen (Vachss). In this statement, Vachss corrects the mislead
recognition of the public. Moreover, he utilizes extremely strong logic and
fluid consistency to bond the separated perspectives of the issue together
and gradually gets the problem from basic definition to further solution.
Vachss implements the technique of appealing to ethos so as to
establish the credibility of his argument. He achieves this by
acknowledging counterarguments and turning them around to support his

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own thoughts, which effectively makes his claim more persuasive. When
the author talks about the topic, Is he beyond our reach? he references
some opinions of other professional legal practitioners, who have been
ducking and dodging their responsibility by saying, We can't deal with
this kid; this kid is (you fill in the blanks with whatever you want ... an
animal, a beast, a lunatic); we can't deal with him. Let the adult system
take him. We'll work with the good kids, the other kids (Vachss). Next, the
author supports his argument with good credibility by refuting the opinion
above, You cannot prevent this kid if you persist in starting where you
have been. By the time you start to prevent, it's already too late.
(Vachss) This is an illustration of the author recognizing the argument that
prevention and treatment should be imposed on life-style violent
juveniles.
As for the rhetorical appeal of pathos, Vachss has done an excellent
job in his speech. At the beginning of the whole piece, he uses the third
person he telling the audience one day of a life-style violent juvenile,
which is accessible and vivid for the audience to understand even if they
may be not familiar with juvenile system. This way of narration also shows
sharp emotion, depicting a character of cruelty and violence, which shows
the urgency of reforming juvenile system. Statements like I believe we
can solve this problem By now we should be experts in what doesn't
work, Let me tell you what's wrong with that (Vachss) are also good use
of pathos to build up an emotional connection with the audience. The
author shows his straightforward style to the audience through these
emotions, which are impressive and effective in calling for actions.

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Overall, Vachss uses strong rhetorical strategies to call for the
attention of both legal practitioners and the public to a neglected group of
serious, violent, habitual juvenile offender. Appeals to logos, ethos and
pathos in this speech present the audience with perfect logical
consistency and conviction, great credibility of the speech and an
emotional connection to the issue respectively. This speech also includes a
lot of stasis, especially showing great exigence of the problem. These
strategies are effective when inventing an argument and convincing both
government and legislation to take actions to deal with and help with
those neglected life-style violent juveniles.

Work Cited
Vachss, Andrew H. Who is The Serious, Violent, Habitual Offender? The
Zero - The Official Website of Andrew Vachss 16 Oct. 2002. Web. 16
Oct. 2015.