More Posturing on Youth Crime

Last fall, some members of Congress tried to outdo one another with harsh measures directed at juvenile offenders. The legislation wasn’t successful, but the authors got to score political points with constituents fed up with crime--especially youth crime.

A group of senators is trying again to tap into that same public frustration by pressing an even tougher juvenile crime bill, but public support for such overreaction has waned. A national poll released earlier this month showed that nearly three out of four Americans oppose harsh treatment of juvenile offenders.

The public clearly wants something better, but the proposed federal legislation fails as usual to address root causes of juvenile crime. The Senate bill is peppered with ridiculous poses and penalties, including up to two weeks of locked-down confinement for teenagers who run away from home and six-month school suspensions for students caught with tobacco products. Like the 1997 bill, it would gut federal laws requiring that juvenile prisoners be separated from adult criminals. And, as in last year’s bill, prosecutors would be permitted to try offenders as adults--even though credible studies have shown that repeat criminality rises nearly 30% when young offenders are tried as adults.

Congress needs to drop this rigid, counterproductive approach. Instead it should send more unrestricted block grants to states and let them tailor their own programs. Juvenile crime problems vary considerably between regions. Flexible federal block grants would also allow states to experiment with new forms of prosecution. Conservatives correctly point out that teenage crimes sometimes escalate from misdemeanor to murder because the juvenile justice system does not impose clear sanctions early on. Why not fund innovative state programs?

In its 1994 crime law, Congress authorized $6.9 billion for crime prevention, but only $688 million has been allocated. Some of it should be used for a bill introduced by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that would fund after-school programs to keep youngsters away from trouble between 3 and 8 p.m.

That’s a start. But to make progress, Congress has to think of juvenile crime bills as tools to solve problems, not just as political flags.