‘94 Candidates Agree on 1 Goal: Curbing Juvenile Crime : But any crackdown could be just a warm-up to an even tougher clash when welfare reform is tackled

Call it tough love, common standards or fear and loathing, but one of the most powerful trends in campaign 1994 is the rising demand for a crackdown on juvenile criminals.

With juvenile violence rising more rapidly than adult violence, promises of boot camps, longer sentences, adult trials and curfews for teen-agers are ringing through campaigns around the country, especially gubernatorial races. This is an agenda with an angry edge--filled with denunciations of punks and thugs and hoodlums. But even so, it may be only the warm-up for a more polarizing conflict next year, when the likelihood is that anxiety over youth crime will become intertwined with the racially charged effort to reform the welfare system.

The first stage of this process--stiffening sanctions against violent juveniles--amounts to a tidal wave. At least 20 states this year moved to prosecute more violent juveniles as adults, thereby allowing courts to impose longer sentences.

In Texas, George W. Bush, the Republican gubernatorial nominee, calls juvenile violence the most important problem in the state; he wants to lower to 14 the age at which juveniles can be tried as adults. California Gov. Pete Wilson has already signed such a bill into law. In Colorado, Democratic Gov. Roy Romer led a special session last fall that created a new system of longer sentences and secure incarceration for juveniles.

Overall, this may represent nothing less than a rejection of the juvenile justice system erected at the turn of the century to protect and reform wayward young people charged with delinquency or petty theft. In the era of killers not yet old enough to shave, the stern new guiding principle appears to be that, whatever the defendant’s age, “every criminal act of an offender must translate into a definite consequence,” as Peter Ramirez of the New York City family court puts it.

Stiffer sanctions against violent juveniles, however, constitute only the first (and relatively less incendiary) step in a broader reassessment. A growing number of candidates in both parties, but especially Republicans, are linking the rise in juvenile violence with the growth in out-of-wedlock births and welfare dependency. Jeb Bush, the GOP gubernatorial nominee in Florida, puts it flatly: “The pathology of the welfare state is, I think, the primary reason why we have . . . juvenile crime.”

In fact, research doesn’t support such a blanket statement.

An exhaustive Justice Department review of sociological studies recently concluded that children from single-parent families are more likely to engage in delinquent and criminal behavior, and that crime rates are higher in neighborhoods with high proportions of mother-only families.

But millions of children grow up in single-parent households without becoming delinquents or criminals. The high rates of crime in neighborhoods with lots of single mothers could also reflect other factors, like racial segregation or poverty, researchers note. And other forms of dysfunction in “intact” families can also predict criminal behavior: child abuse, criminal activity by parents and marital discord.

“Not all children follow the same path to delinquency,” the review concluded.

Still, the relationship between father absence and crime appears strong enough--especially in isolated inner-city neighborhoods--to force the issue of broken families into the juvenile crime debate. And that, in turn, is increasing discussion of what Princeton University criminologist John J. DiIulio terms the “most radical of radical social program proposals”: an increased effort by government to guide the upbringing of children raised fatherless and poor.

Put another way, what we are hearing is the opening notes of a movement to bring back the orphanage.

This call is coming from two directions. Social conservatives like William J. Bennett and Charles Murray see orphanages as a way to care for children who could otherwise be left destitute by their proposals to cut off all welfare benefits for single mothers, in the hope of discouraging illegitimacy.

More intriguingly, criminologists like DiIulio are pushing the idea of orphanage-like institutions as a means of removing children from surroundings that raise their risk of involvement in crime. The leader in this modest movement has been UCLA management professor James Q. Wilson. In an article last month in Commentary, Wilson renewed his call for “group homes” with strict rules and supervision, where single, teen-age parents and their children could live in “the kind of structured, consistent and nurturant environment that children need.”

In looking to modernize and adapt the orphanage, these writers are championing an institution long out of favor. For years, the clear preference of social welfare agencies has been to keep children in families, even those that only loosely deserve the name; the Census Bureau now counts fewer than 25,000 children living in long-term care facilities like orphanages.

Those numbers reflect the modern image of the orphanage as a close cousin to the prison. But that judgment is too sweeping. A study in the Atlantic Monthly of contemporary orphanages like the Children’s Village in New York found many cheerful and effective: “An institution may be the first home some children have ever known,” concluded Mary-Lou Weisman.

Even at this early stage, orphanage advocates are dividing into two camps: hard and soft. The hard side leans toward separating children from their parents, either by legal fiat or by eliminating the public assistance that parents need to keep their family together. That seems like a dead end: It is difficult to imagine Americans accepting a policy that coerces women in significant numbers to give up their children.

But the approach of soft-siders could offer more grounds for experiment and consensus. UCLA’s Wilson says that, except in the extreme cases that require removal, the goal should be to keep young single mothers with their children--but to relocate both to a safer and more structured environment operated by private institutions like churches, with government financial support.

The left’s initial reaction may be to recoil from such an idea as coercive itself; but liberals should think twice. While demanding more responsibility from young mothers (curfews, progress toward high school graduation), such institutions could also offer them more comprehensive services (health care, parenting classes, immunizations) than they now receive.

The rub is the cost. Mary Jo Bane, an assistant secretary at the Health and Human Services Department, says successful orphanages now spend from $30,000 to $50,000 annually per child--”as much as it costs to run a prison or nursing home.” Even converting welfare grants into vouchers that could be used to buy such services for children, as Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) and conservative House Republicans are suggesting, wouldn’t cover even a fraction of that bill, she notes.

Could institutions be designed that would provide comparable services at less cost? No one knows. That’s one reason to proceed cautiously. But at a time when states are minting dollars to punish violent juveniles, it makes sense to at least experiment with new means of helping young people stay out of trouble in the first place.

The Washington Outlook column appears here every other Monday.

The Rise in Arrests

For most violent crimes, arrest rates for juveniles have been rising faster than the arrest rates for adults--fueling the nationwide turn toward toughening sentences for youthful criminals. In 1992, children younger than 18 committed more than twice as many murders as in 1983, and almost twice as many aggravated assaults.

INCREASE IN ARREST RATES, 1983 to 1992, JUVENILE VS. ADULT

Under 18 18 and older Murder and non-negligent manslaughter 128% 9% Forcible rape 25% 14% Aggravated assault 95% 69% Car theft 120% 45% Violent crime overall 57% 50%

Source: FBI