Carjackers Found to Be Young, Violent Have-Nots Seeking Status : Crime: Amid calls for stiffer jail terms, some experts believe the criminal justice system cannot contain or help the perpetrators.

Anyone willing to steal a car at gunpoint is probably young, urban, violent and hungry for status.

These carjackers also are likely to have been victims themselves of great personal violence, the experts add.

“They kind of treat the victim the way they feel about themselves,” said Jerome Miller, president of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives in Alexandria, Va., which conducts research for groups advocating reform in the criminal justice system.

Amid calls for FBI crackdowns and longer jail terms for carjacking--taking a vehicle by force, while the driver is still in it--sociologists and criminal justice officials are seeking causes for this trend toward deadly car theft.

They say carjacking is a crime of have-nots spawned by a broken-down criminal justice system that can neither contain nor help them.

Most youths who steal cars are seeking status in the criminal subculture, said Andrew Ruotolo, a New Jersey prosecutor who works with the state’s anti-car theft task force.

Ruotolo said carjackings are a very small percentage of all auto theft cases the task force handles. Carjackers, he said, are the most extreme car thieves, often repeat offenders who don’t want to be spotted driving in a car that appears to have been broken into.

“Carjacking is a crime of violence, certainly no different than armed robbery. By its nature you get the car intact and you get the keys. You get to keep it a little longer before it’s obvious it’s stolen,” he said. “Our experience is cars are stolen by young adults and juveniles to commit other crimes in. So, more often than not, you’re dealing with a violent offender when dealing with a car thief.”

In the eight months that the task force has operated in two New Jersey counties, officers have arrested more than 250 people for stealing cars, the bulk of them juveniles on joy rides. The task force recovered an estimated $2 million in cars, about 70% of which had little or no damage. Officials could not estimate how many of these case were carjackings.

About 80% of those arrested had prior criminal records, often involving car theft, Ruotolo said. Sometimes, they boldly crashed stolen cars into police vehicles to taunt officers.

The Senate voted Tuesday to make armed hijacking of a car a federal crime punishable by a 15-year prison term.

A hijacking involving a firearm and resulting in the death of an innocent person could result in a life sentence. Trafficking in stolen cars would be punishable by five to 10 years in prison.

The legislation was approved as part of a catchall tax bill passed by the Senate. Similar legislation is pending in the House but there is a dispute over details.

Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.) offered the amendment as a result of a car hijacking that resulted in the death of a woman in a Washington suburb last month. She was dragged to death when an arm became entangled in a seat belt after thieves forced her out of the car carrying her baby.

According to FBI statistics, more than 1.7 million vehicles were stolen in 1991. That’s an average of one theft every 19 seconds.

The FBI also cited a 97% increase in the number of youth under 18 arrested for car theft during the last 10 years, from 32,195 in 1982 to 63,389 last year.

There are no breakdowns on the number of carjackings nationally, although the crime has been a problem in Newark, N.J., New York City, Los Angeles, Miami and Detroit. A computer study by The Washington Post showed at least 245 carjackings in the Washington area between Jan. 1 and Aug. 16.

At least seven people have been killed in carjackings in the Washington area. In the case cited by Pressler, Pamela Basu was dragged to her death when she became entangled in a seat belt after two men took over her car at a stop sign and sped away. Her 2-year-old daughter was deposited, unharmed, by the roadside.

Police arrested two suspects, Rodney Eugene Solomon, 27, and Bernard Eric Miller, 16, and charged them both with murder, kidnaping and robbery. Miller’s mother said her son told her he and Solomon smoked PCP in the hours before their arrest.

Other carjackings in and around the District of Columbia involved two girls, 14 and 15, armed with a semiautomatic pistol, who stole a car from a man and went on a joy ride; and an 18-year-old high school football star was killed while trying to hijack an off-duty FBI agent’s car.

The Basu case prompted calls for widespread police crackdowns, longer prison terms and tough new laws against carjackings.