Lungren Urges Releasing Young Arrestees’ Names

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren said Tuesday he intends to push for legislation stripping serious juvenile offenders and graffiti vandals of anonymity when arrested, but stopped short of endorsing a bill permitting court-ordered paddling of taggers.

Saying society needs to “reintroduce shame,” Lungren announced in his annual State of the Public Safety address that he favors removing what long has been a cornerstone of the juvenile justice system: the confidentiality of young offenders’ names.

Under Lungren’s proposal, police would release the names of any juvenile arrested for serious felonies, including burglary, rape and murder, and for graffiti, which he called “urban terrorism.”

Currently, the names of juveniles tried as adults are released. But state law traditionally has shielded the identities of delinquents. The law assumes they can be reformed and should not be branded for youthful mistakes.

But the Republican attorney general, who is planning to run for governor in 1998, said rehabilitation “hasn’t worked very well.”

“We need to reintroduce shame,” Lungren said. “That is a serious reason why we need to know [identities]. Right now, they are exempted from their identity being known by their families, by the community. They, individually, and their families are shielded from any embarrassment or shame.”

Lungren made the comments as he released crime statistics showing that violent and major property crime dropped in California by 7.7% in the first nine months of 1995. Homicides dropped 4.3% in the 66 major cities and counties that reported statistics to the state Department of Justice.

Major crime reported by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department dropped 8.9% during that period, although homicide increased 14.1%. In the city of Los Angeles, overall reported crime dropped 5.4%, while homicide rose 1.8%.

Lungren, speaking to Sacramento’s Comstock Club, largely attributed the drop in crime to the passage of the “three strikes” sentencing law in 1994 and other get-tough laws adopted in recent years. But he said several other changes are needed before crime is contained.

Among his major proposals, Lungren said he intends to seek passage of a $32-million bond in the Legislature to upgrade California’s crime labs. But his main focus was on juvenile crime. Lungren called for a new anti-drug campaign aimed at youths, and once more urged the entertainment industry to stop producing movies and computer games with excessive violence.

Lungren did not, however, endorse a bill by Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange) allowing courts to order the paddling of graffiti vandals. A committee in the new GOP-controlled Assembly approved that bill last week.

“We need to go a far step from where we are now with our juvenile justice system toward a tougher system,” Lungren said. “But I’m not prepared to say we need to go as far as [paddling] . . . I just haven’t thought that was the necessary solution to our problems.”

Lungren was cautious about a second bill approved by an Assembly committee last week that would lift the requirement that motorcyclists wear helmets. He said he believes the 1992 motorcycle helmet law under attack by bikers “has saved lives, saved the mental capacity of individuals and, in a very real sense, saved society both social and economic costs.”

“If society had no obligation to those who were riding motorcycles with no helmets, and society suffered no loss, it would be one thing,” Lungren said. “But we are obligated as a compassionate society to take care of these people” when they are injured.