Children’s Crimes of Violence
In your Aug. 12 editorial, “The End of Innocence,” you claim, “The rise in violent juvenile crime underscores the need for parents, teachers, judges, social workers and others to find better ways of intervening early in the lives of troubled children in an effort to head off violence.” Parents should not be “intervening” in the lives of their children; they should be in the early lives of their children.
Later, you say, “The budget . . . embraces one promising concept . . . $50 million for after-school programs to keep kids occupied between 3 and 8 p.m., the hours when juvenile crime peaks.” The $50 million will go for naught unless it enables parents to be home with their children, raising them with a sense of honor and justice (as you indicate later on), with values that will preclude them from severe antisocial behavior.
It’s not complex. Children don’t need $50 million of programs. They need present parents who care. Until we somehow recognize this and return to it as our own value as adults, we will continue to witness the unfortunate consequences.
ED SHOOP
Somis
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It’s bad enough when consumers, their attention narrowly focused on a lighted screen, are subliminally hypnotized by repeated commercial messages, but children, who are very suggestible, are terribly at risk when they listen for extended time periods to violent rap lyrics. The messages they deliver, presented rhythmically and repetitively to the listener’s focused attention, possess all the components of hypnotic commands.
Their danger has been underestimated and should provoke outrage beyond whiny complaints. Their marketing and distribution should be prohibited as a danger to public health.
BARBARA SNADER
Los Angeles
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Re “Boys Sentenced for Arkansas School Murders,” Aug. 12:
Regarding the two teens who brutally murdered five people in Jonesbono, Ark., I don’t care if they are 14 or 40. They deliberately gunned down five human beings, fully knowing what they were doing. Enough with this age discrimination. They murdered and they should be subjected to the death penalty! Instead they’ll be free upon their 18th birthdays. Where’s justice?
JAMES M. LEHMANN
Torrance