Youth Crime

Several dozen residents and the borough's administration attended a town meeting at the community center here last night to identify problems and search for solutions to a rise in juvenile crime. Sitting in a circle, residents raised one concern after another: unsupervised youths, profanity, lack of evening activities, a need for more male involvement, vandalism. The list went on. Though few in number, incidents involving minors in town have been increasing steadily for the past five years.

IF CITY CONTROLLER Alan Butkovitz is to be believed, marauding hordes of transit pass-wielding students are creating a crime wave on SEPTA, aided by homeless people who are occupying the train stations because SEPTA won't remove them. This is the picture he paints in a subway safety report issued last week. The only problem is, there's no evidence to back up his claim, especially his main contention: That when the school district switched from student tokens and transfers to passes allowing unlimited rides on the system, the district also gave a pass to truant students to ride SEPTA commiting crimes.

If a meeting held here two months ago to identify problems and search for solutions to a rise in youth crime was like the "gestation of the egg stage" - in the words of one borough official - then what has happened since represents full fetal formation. That formation is the Lawnside Youth Association, a group of about 35 youth and adults. Since its creation shortly after that meeting, the group has met regularly to devise a plan to curb juvenile delinquency. What that solution will be, organizers are quick to note, is yet to be worked out. But "we're organizing," Rhonda Wardlow-Hurley said.

The downtick in violent juvenile crime in 1995, just reported by Attorney General Janet Reno - a 2.9 percent drop overall, with murders declining 15.2 percent - doesn't mean we're on our way out of the woods. The new figures follow some terrifying years - six in which juvenile arrests for murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault rose 50 percent; seven in which juvenile arrests for weapons law violations doubled; 10 years that saw the number of homicides by juveniles triple.

Youth Crime. It's everywhere: In our neighborhoods, on our streets, in our schools, even in our homes. There are gang wars in our cities, knife and gun battles in our high schools, robberies, burglaries and other violence in our suburbs. Everyone is talking about youth crime, about the escalation of violence among youth in the '90s. But in decrying this violence, few have offered any solutions. Nearly three weeks ago, Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.) offered his. Because he believes there is a connection between violence that kids see on TV and violence that kids act out, Simon has sponsored legislation that will radically reduce the levels of violence broadcast on network television.

In the first 10 months of last year, Philadelphia police arrested 1,726 youths for crimes that included murder, rape, robbery and assault. During the same period, 2,476 youngsters became the victims of the same type of crimes. Yesterday, Police Commissioner Richard Neal announced the formation of a four-pronged plan in efforts to reduce youth crime in the city. "One of the things that we are going to enter into today and in the coming months and years is . . . a set of initiatives that we hope will provide some alternatives that will specifically address some of the problems," Neal said at a news conference.

A debate is mounting over what is causing a tide of juvenile brutality that has terrorized the nation since 1985. Some of the nation's most influential crime experts blame "super-predators" - young people bred for violence through generations of poverty, fatherlessness, drug addiction and neglect. But a growing number of scholars believe such mutants do not exist. The real culprit, they say, is the profusion of lethal weapons in the hands of children. "This is really a gun story," said Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Youth curfews are popular. In poll after poll, Americans support laws that restrict teenagers' activities during certain hours of the day and night. Youth curfews are also logical. If youngsters are getting into trouble, it makes sense to get them off the streets. There's only one problem with youth curfews: They don't work. And we shouldn't kid ourselves that they do. Yet that's what we're doing in Philadelphia, where Mayor Nutter recently extended a 9 p.m. curfew on Friday and Saturday nights for all unaccompanied minors in Center City and University City.

Do you think young people are becoming more violent? If you answered yes, you're not alone. A recent study . . . reports that 62 percent of the American public think that youth crime is on the rise. . . . [But] youth crime is at its lowest level in decades. The FBI Uniform Crime Reports showed that between 1993 and 1999, youth homicides decreased 68 percent to their lowest rate since 1966. Columnist Jane Twomey Baltimore Sun, May 14

Embracing another conservative position, President Clinton yesterday urged all American cities to adopt strict curfews banning young people from the streets at night in an effort to curb youth crime. Crime fell sharply in seven major U.S. cities - including this notoriously crime-ridden one - after such curfews were imposed, according to a Justice Department study that Clinton released here. Clinton ordered Attorney General Janet Reno to send guidelines on how to enforce such curfews to mayors' offices nationwide, even though 146 of the nation's 200 largest cities already have adopted curfews without presidential help.

Youth curfews are popular. In poll after poll, Americans support laws that restrict teenagers' activities during certain hours of the day and night. Youth curfews are also logical. If youngsters are getting into trouble, it makes sense to get them off the streets. There's only one problem with youth curfews: They don't work. And we shouldn't kid ourselves that they do. Yet that's what we're doing in Philadelphia, where Mayor Nutter recently extended a 9 p.m. curfew on Friday and Saturday nights for all unaccompanied minors in Center City and University City.

The brutal videotaped beating death of a Chicago student sparked outrage, but it is a sad reminder of how much violence exists around many urban school districts, including Philadelphia. It prompted U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to travel to Chicago last week to issue a long overdue "call to action" to target and prevent youth crime. President Obama dispatched Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan to that city in the wake of the vicious beating of Derrion Albert last month by fellow students.

The families of more than 70 youths filed suit in federal court last week against Luzerne County Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan, who pleaded guilty to sending juveniles to privately run detention centers in exchange for at least $2.6 million in kickbacks. The youths got months of confinement for absurdly petty offenses, such as spoofing a vice principal on a MySpace page. The scandal is a byproduct of a national trend. For the past three decades, scores of private facilities have quietly absorbed an enormous proportion of those serving time for juvenile offenses.

IF CITY CONTROLLER Alan Butkovitz is to be believed, marauding hordes of transit pass-wielding students are creating a crime wave on SEPTA, aided by homeless people who are occupying the train stations because SEPTA won't remove them. This is the picture he paints in a subway safety report issued last week. The only problem is, there's no evidence to back up his claim, especially his main contention: That when the school district switched from student tokens and transfers to passes allowing unlimited rides on the system, the district also gave a pass to truant students to ride SEPTA commiting crimes.

Alpha Dog is true-crime stuff set in a So-Cal suburbia populated with tattooed rich boys, teenage vixens, drug-dealing dads, and a couple of stupid, deadly thugs. Written and directed by Nick Cassavetes, and based on a sordid tale of abduction, murder and international flight involving the improbably named FBI most-wanted-listee Jesse James Hollywood, the film belongs in the same category as Bully, Mean Creek and River's Edge. You know: the kids-do-the-dumbest-things genre. Emile Hirsch stars as Johnny Truelove (the Jesse James Hollywood role)

Do you think young people are becoming more violent? If you answered yes, you're not alone. A recent study . . . reports that 62 percent of the American public think that youth crime is on the rise. . . . [But] youth crime is at its lowest level in decades. The FBI Uniform Crime Reports showed that between 1993 and 1999, youth homicides decreased 68 percent to their lowest rate since 1966. Columnist Jane Twomey Baltimore Sun, May 14

Chally Dang keeps an envelope stuffed with pictures on the top shelf of his locker. There's one of his old girlfriend. One of his cousin's wedding. And another of his friend's newborn. For most teenagers, the locker would be one in a long line in a high school hallway. Dang's is in a cell in Pennsylvania's newest prison. For the last few months, Dang has been serving a 5 1/2- to 11-year sentence in a maximum-security prison designed for the state's youngest, most violent criminals.

The nation lost a visionary last month, when Pulitzer-prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks passed away at 83. Brooks may be remembered most fondly for her ability to portray the experience of America's young black people with honesty and compassion. She often wrote from her own experiences on Chicago's South Side, explaining, "I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it. " Far too often, the truth about juvenile crime is obscured by cliches and paranoia. Recently, the U.S. Department of Justice released new statistics demonstrating that juvenile crime has dropped for the sixth straight year.

as America's children return to school, they do so in a more fearful atmosphere than at any time in memory. Ironically, at the same time, America's high schoolers are the least violent in recorded history. This stark disconnect between our kids' behavior and our suspicion of them can have a profound impact on their future. The most recent National Crime Victimization Survey reports the lowest violent juvenile crime rate ever. This means that the "baby-boomer" generation was more violent than their high school age teen-agers.

When the discussion turned to violent lyrics in rap music, Ed Hamler, 17, was blunt and critical. "We're getting lazy as a people, and we need to come up off that," Hamler said of young people whose lives have been unduly influenced by the violent messages of rap music. "We need to start getting back to education. " Hamler, a senior at William Penn High School, was among a panel of teenagers and adults who spoke at yesterday's eighth-annual Youth Crime Town Hearing, which was held in the mayor's City Hall reception room.