Heading Off Youth Crime

No federal laws can prevent tragedies like Littleton, but two bills that Congress will consider Wednesday could reduce the chances of teenage anger escalating to violence.

The first bill, by Rep. Bill McCollum (R-Fla.), would dole out $1.5 billion over three years to local and state governments that impose corrective sanctions beginning with young, first-time offenders. Ranging from counseling to restitution and community service to boot camps, the measures are meant to make clear to teenagers that antisocial behavior does matter and requires penalties.

Some Clinton administration officials worry that the bill has so few strings attached that state and local officials would waste money on ineffective, hard-line interventions like hiring more prosecutors to pursue delinquents. The legislation, however, does establish an accountability system that would require officials to compare hard versus soft sanctions at the end of a year to see which worked best.

Some experts say the key to measuring progress is not to be hard or soft but to be perceptive. Juvenile justice experts argue that sanctions that involve little more than occasional counseling can miss subtle early warning signs. That pattern appears in the cases of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Littleton killers, who had been seen by counselors after being arrested for breaking into a car. A court officer described the youths as bright and “likely to succeed in life.” Had he seen their hate-filled video or the bomb-building instructions on Harris’ Web site he could hardly have come to that conclusion.

That’s why state and county officials should spend any new federal money on programs like Los Angeles County’s Dorothy Kirby Center School, a boot camp with a long history of using seasoned counselors to identify emotional problems in hardened juvenile offenders that other social workers miss.

The second bill before Congress would restore a law prohibiting states from using federal money for demonstrably ineffective punishments, such as imprisoning runaway children in cells with adults. Passage would provide a healthy correction to potentially damaging juvenile crime measures proposed last year in Congress. Then, perhaps, something positive might come from the horrible tragedy in Colorado.