Teen Crime: Small Group Plays Big Part : Arrests: 8% of juveniles commit 55% of repeat offenses in O.C. study aimed at identifying potential chronic offenders.

Orange County’s juvenile justice system is a virtual revolving door for a small percentage of delinquent teen-agers who terrorize innocent victims, strain police and probation resources, and cost taxpayers millions of dollars each year in court and incarceration expenses, a seven-year study has found.

Probation officers who have been tracking and recording the criminal activities of 6,500 juvenile delinquents since 1985 say a mere 8% commit about 55% of the repeat offenses. Some have been arrested up to 14 times within the last six years, officials said.

As young adults, some 53% of these habitual offenders were arrested for committing other crimes, the study found.

Criminal justice officials identify these repeat criminals as a predatory group whose family and community ties are sundered and who seem to have lost their stake in society.

Researchers have also found that these teen-agers most often have lived in poverty and are victims of physical and sexual abuse. Many were raised--or neglected--by parents who are alcoholics, drug addicts and criminals.

Local probation officials, who described their research as one of the largest studies of juvenile delinquency in the United States, have received some federal assistance to design a program that uses this research to identify potential chronic juvenile delinquents and move them off the repeat-offender track.

Such an intervention plan--using the so-called “predictors of juvenile crime” developed from this research--is in the works. It will probably draw on the resources of county agencies involved in law enforcement, health care, mental health counseling and social services.

Philip Harris, head of the criminal justice department at Temple University, described some of the findings in the Orange County study as consistent with similar research.

“What’s unique is that (Orange County) officials have developed a method for predicting who these (problem) kids are and they are developing a plan to work with them before they become habitual offenders,” Harris said. “It’s a very exciting and promising approach.

The Orange County study was initiated eight years ago by Michael Schumacher, who has headed the county’s Probation Department since 1979.

Probation officers tracked 3,304 first-time juvenile offenders from 1985 to 1987 and an additional 3,164 from 1987 to 1989. The activities of some offenders were recorded for up to six years after their first brush with the law.

The two groups were strikingly similar: About 71% of the children did not commit any further offenses and an additional 21% committed a second and, sometimes, a third offense.

But 8% of these juvenile offenders became chronic, repeat offenders. They committed crimes that ranged from shoplifting, car thefts, burglaries and armed robberies to fatal drive-by shootings.

A habitual offender is someone like Rick, a 17-year-old Santa Ana resident who has been arrested at least 11 times by local authorities.

Rick was only 10 when he was “jumped” into a violent Santa Ana street gang, whose trademark tattoos are now etched on his nape and knuckles.

The fifth of eight children, Rick said he clung to gang life because he received little supervision at home and “I wanted to be part of the group.”

Before he became a teen-ager, Rick dropped out of school to follow a life of crime.

Rick said he robbed indiscriminately to satisfy a growing habit for marijuana and methamphetamines. A doughnut shop here. A liquor store there. An innocent bystander.

“I didn’t like doing it, but the money was there, and when you want it, you go for it,” he said unflinchingly. “It’s an easier way.”

Most of his crimes--even a $1,600 stickup of a Denny’s restaurant--went unpunished, Rick said, and even when he was caught and arrested, he would be placed on probation, which he often violated.

Earlier this year, Rick was arrested by deputies as he attempted to break into a Taco Bell in Mission Viejo. He is now serving a one-year sentence at the Youth Guidance Center, a county camp in Santa Ana for juvenile offenders.

While the camp offers a rehabilitation program, it is a long way from an intervention program that would have tagged Rick at 10 or 11 as a potential chronic juvenile criminal.

That is just what probation officials want to do. Probation officials have used the study to come up with predictors for chronic juvenile crime and want to use them to identify a potential repeat offender during their first brush with the law.

About 1,000 juveniles are referred to the Probation Department each month. The department houses 675 to 700 youths at Juvenile Hall in Orange and three other county camps for juvenile offenders. The others are sent home on probation. Probation officers supervise about 5,000 juveniles at any given time, and say some 500 are chronic habitual offenders.

Probation officials found during their research that juvenile delinquents are plagued by a litany of problems ranging from drug and alcohol abuse to serious family problems.

The research revealed that one-time offenders averaged less than one of these significant problems, while the less serious repeat offenders--who came back two or three times--averaged less than two.

On the other hand, chronic repeat offenders averaged almost three significant problems, Schumacher said.

The findings painted an unsettling portrait of the chronic repeat offender: Most are 15 years old or younger when they are arrested the first time. They do poorly in school, perhaps because they suffer learning disabilities, or from skipping or disrupting classes. Often they use drugs or alcohol and have reputations as thieves or runaways. And they join gangs, seeking the company of other problem children. They will probably spend an average of 14 months in juvenile lockup before they reach the age of 18.

Many times, they commit shocking crimes of violence that cause great pain to randomly selected victims. For example, one of two teen-agers charged in the recent slaying of a foreign tourist in Florida was a 13-year-old boy who had been arrested more than 50 times.

Kara, a freckle-faced teen-ager with curly red hair, fits the portrait of the habitual offender. During the last four years, she has been arrested for shoplifting, loitering, endangerment of a minor and prostitution, among other things.

“I’ve lost count,” she said, when asked how many times she has been arrested. “I probably can’t count so high.”

The Yorba Linda native is 16, but Kara has spent a great deal of her life bouncing among Orangewood Children’s Home, group homes and juvenile lockups.

Kara’s problems run deep into her childhood. Her father was an alcoholic who died when she was young, and her mother later moved in with another man who abused drugs and beat up Kara and her mother, Kara said.

Social workers eventually took custody of Kara, whose mother started giving her joints at age 9. Kara ran away from the group homes where she was sent, and during one period moved in with a Santa Ana drug dealer, turning tricks to satisfy her $250-a-day cocaine habit.

At age 13, when most girls her age were thinking about attending pep rallies, Kara was attending cocaine parties with adults, who stole cars to support their habits. One night they broke into a Cypress used car dealership and stole seven cars, which they sold for $200 each to buy cocaine, she said.

“I was hanging around with gangbangers and head bangers, something that little girls shouldn’t do,” Kara said. “I was trying to get away from my life. I didn’t have a mother. I didn’t have a family. I didn’t have a life. Drugs took me away. . . .”

Drugs also got her into trouble. Last year, Kara got high on cocaine while baby-sitting her 8-year-old brother in Anaheim. When the boy wouldn’t stop crying, she tied him up, placed him in the shower, and told him “to cool off,” she said. Kara was arrested for child endangerment after a neighbor called police.

Most recently, she was taken to Juvenile Hall. There she suffered blackouts and couldn’t remember how she had gotten there. When probation officers showed her booking pictures, she realized that she had lost 68 pounds within a few months.

She asked probation officers for help and is now in a rehabilitation program at Phoenix House in Santa Ana.

County probation chief Schumacher said local probation officials are now working with Temple University and the National Institute of Corrections in Washington to design a program that would identify potential chronic offenders and work with them before they become incorrigible.

Schumacher could not provide details about the program, which is expected to be launched in January. But he said that in the next few months county officials would put together the program, to provide counseling and other support for the families of these troubled children.

“If we help these kids, society on the whole will benefit,” said Schumacher. “There will be fewer victims, fewer wasted lives and far less costs to the taxpayers.”

Craig Brown, undersecretary for the state Department of Corrections, said programs like the one Orange County is proposing could help “all the way up the line.”

“Those bad kids grow up to be the felons that fill our institutions,” Brown said. “I don’t think any one of us has the answer, but we have to work jointly toward a solution.”

The local study is already having an impact across the state.

Spurred by the Orange County research, probation officials in Los Angeles County have delved into their records and found that a small percentage of juvenile delinquents--about 16%--are responsible for a majority of the repeat offenses.

The Los Angeles County Probation Department now is also preparing a program that would seek to identify and help potential habitual offenders, said Roy Sakoda, a probation consultant in Los Angeles.

State officials say Orange County’s research could also be helpful to them because repeat offenders make up 63% of the 3,000 juveniles in the California Youth Authority, the largest youth correctional facility in the world.

“Orange County has hit on something here that we can all use to help our young people,” said Bill Kolender, director of the Youth Authority. “I think it’s pretty obvious that we cannot continue the way we’re going. There needs to be early intervention for these kids . . . who are adopting violent antisocial behavior.”

Problem Pattern

An Orange County Probation Department study conducted from 1987 to 1992 identified traits present in a troublesome group of repeat juvenile offenders: School behavior, performance problems: 78% Family problems (abuse, neglect, etc.): 58 Drug, alcohol abuse: 49 Theft: 38 Chronic runaway: 27 Gang member: 16 Note: Numbers add to more than 100% because offenders can fall into more than one category Source: Orange County Probation Department