TV REVIEWS : Moyers Probes ‘Violence’ on PBS

Television will never solve a problem inherent to the medium--covering the big issues with too little time to cover them. Host Bill Moyers makes as sincere an effort as we’ve seen to overcome this obstacle with his epic PBS report, “What Can We Do About Violence?” Clocking in at four hours during two evenings, Moyers’ exploration of the causes for and solutions to violent crime is long enough to reach to the heart of the issue--an uncommon television accomplishment.

Tonight’s opening hours jump past the grim statistics of violent crime (on a national downward trend, but starkly upward in inner-city areas) and bring us face-to-face with a host of young criminals. As Moyers sits with a group of teen offenders at a youth detention facility in Ventura, what emerges is a group portrait of young men whose goodness and intelligence have finally been unearthed. These are smart boys who lacked both fathers and the values to know right from wrong. Regardless of class background, this combination will often produce the young thug of America’s nightmares.

Hard prison time is not portrayed here; this is about punishment to reform youth, before they become the repeat offenders filling America’s prisons. The problem of convicted youth escaping from halfway houses and being recycled back through an overburdened juvenile court system lacks easy solutions. The surest one is to change the young prisoner into a good citizen, and the most interesting example of this is Florida’s “Last Chance Ranch,” a detention facility where teen convicts are subjected to a term of hard labor in the swamps, teamwork and schooling in skills and values.

Moyers’ report is infused with the belief that people can change, that violence is as much a response to conditions--lack of opportunities, lack of parental guidance--as it is a part of the genes.

There are problems though. Tonight’s sequence pressing for gun control is heavy on emotions and light on solutions (nowhere is it mentioned that guns might be registered like automobiles), and another on the effect of TV and movie violence on children is worse. Overwhelming the obvious point that blood and guts are bad for kids is an assaulting, intensely gory montage of violent movie scenes.

“What Can We Do About Violence?” balances heartbreaking stories (the terrible playground shooting of young James Darby) with emboldening accounts of Sauls turned into Pauls. Whether these accounts, and the ideas behind them, can alter the American taste for violence is a huge unanswered question.