Thornburgh Decries Youth Violence, Urges Courts to Get Tough

Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, citing a rising rate of violent acts committed by youths, said Wednesday that juvenile justice systems must be held accountable.

“To a remarkable extent,” juvenile and family courts “have kept crime a family secret,” Thornburgh told the New Mexico Council on Crime and Delinquency in his first comments on youthful crime since he became the nation’s top law enforcement official.

He noted that the secrecy surrounding juvenile court proceedings is designed to avoid stamping adults as suspect because of mistakes made in their youth.

“That is less and less to be tolerated by American society,” he said.

“A problem adolescence--even of the most desperate nature--is no longer seen as mitigation of culpability.”

He coupled his call for a crackdown on violent young criminals with a plea that athletes, entertainers, government officials and others in the public eye behave as role models for young people in the face of the disintegrating family structure.

“It is clear that not just new laws--nor more regulations, nor further court decisions--will do the job alone,” he said.

As long as the family is intact, the parent is the role model, Thornburgh said. “But, too often, the family exists within a deteriorating social fabric and has even abdicated its child-rearing responsibilities altogether,” so that others must serve as good examples.

“Too often,” he went on, “responsibility is avoided or irresponsibility openly flaunted” by public figures “whose values are communicated to young people through the omnipresence of television.”

He cited as examples “entertainers who make light of--or even glorify--the use of drugs or the illegitimacy of their offspring” and an athlete who justifies cocaine use by saying it’s “only in the off season.”

Thornburgh also pointed to government officials who preach, but don’t practice, honesty in public office, and “business and financial leaders whose pursuit of greed and avarice trashes the positive values of the honest marketplace.”

As a federal official, Thornburgh has little direct authority over juvenile justice. State and local jurisdictions are primarily responsible, but he was clearly attempting to use his office to help chart a change of course to meet “the gravity of the situation” of mounting violence among youths.

Thornburgh said that too many children face “untenable social entrapment,” as they are being reared in conditions close to nihilism. He pointed to recent findings by the National Commission on Children that one of every five American children grows up in a household where income is below the “poverty line.” A white child born in the last 10 years has only a 30% chance of finishing high school while living at home with both parents. That chance is 6% for a black child, he said.

“What chance does such a child have--given the weakness of the family structure, and, often, the pervasiveness of the drug culture, under these unhappy conditions--to become a law-abiding citizen?” Thornburgh asked.

“We are facing grave endangerment of America’s children--those who will soon become America--and we must do all in our power to come to their rescue,” the attorney general said .