Unite on Juvenile Crime

At least six times in the last year and a half, U.S. teenagers have opened fire on school campuses, leaving 13 students dead and 44 wounded. While overall juvenile crime has been declining since 1994, the crimes juveniles are committing are often more heinous. Only last week, for instance, two 17-year-olds allegedly killed five people in two Aurora, Colo., homes.

At a Senate hearing earlier this month, liberal and conservative criminologists rallied around a common solution to the problem: more federal funding for truancy, mentoring and other programs in which police, teachers and counselors intervene early in the lives of errant teenagers--before their behavior can escalate from “acting out” to violence.

Unfortunately, congressional support for a bill that would do just that is now eroding. Last year, the bill, by Rep. Frank Riggs (R-Windsor), passed the House of Representatives by an overwhelming 413 to 14. But on Tuesday, House Republicans combined the Riggs bill with a hard-line measure by Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) that provides juvenile crime dollars to states only if they agree to implement a series of hard-line punishments against errant juveniles. And Senate Democrats, rather than rallying behind the Riggs bill, are introducing their own crime measure today.

This divided effort will enable both parties to posture--with Republicans painting themselves as tough on crime and with Democrats presenting themselves as champions of crime prevention--but it will defeat bipartisan momentum that could make good on Congress’ professed intent to pass a juvenile crime bill before its October recess.

What’s most unfortunate about this new partisan tinge is that it misleadingly characterizes the juvenile crime bills as either “hard” or “soft” on juvenile offenders. In fact, the “hard” McCollum bill, by failing to discipline juvenile offenders until they commit heinous offenses, is arguably “soft” on crime, whereas the “soft” Riggs bill, by focusing on catching young offenders early, comes down hard with discipline that has a chance to change behavior.

The Senate should remove the most harmful elements of the McCollum measure from the combined bill. For instance, McCollum’s draconian, big-government language forces states to try juveniles over age 13 in adult courts for violent felonies and permits some juveniles to be incarcerated with adults. Opponents of the McCollum bill know that juveniles incarcerated with adults are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted and twice as likely to be beaten than when only juveniles are jailed together. Repeat offenders and hardened criminals, studies show, are often born of such physical abuse.

The Riggs bill, in contrast, would give teachers, police and other local authorities the resources they need to spot warning signs. Remember 15-year-old Kip Kinkel, who killed both of his parents, then went to his high school and killed two students earlier this year in Oregon? All of the tell-tale warnings were ignored. Kinkel was known to have tortured animals and con-structed homemade bombs. The day before his outburst of killing, he was arrested for bringing a stolen gun to school, but local authorities released him to his parents without evaluation, detention or sanction.

Criminologists like George L. Kelling of Rutgers University, who helped fashion New York City’s successful zero-tolerance crackdown on juvenile crime, say the key lies in acting immediately on the minor offenses that often mark the beginning of an increasingly violent life in crime. As Kelling puts it, “Just as a broken window left untended is a sign that nobody cares and leads to more serious damage, so disorderly behavior is a sign that nobody cares and leads to fear of crime, more serious crime and urban decay.”

The Riggs bill, not more political posturing, would help give authorities a real chance of fixing the window now.