TO REDEEM THE WORST, TO BETTER THE BEST

IN two messages to Congress last week. President Johnson put before the country major measures involving the youth of America. His proposals to combat crime ranged far beyond the problems of youth to consider curbs on all manner of violence in American society, but they vitally concerned the young because so large a proportion of crime is committed by them. His message on youth itself discussed how to nourish achievement, open opportunities and channel youthful energies into law-abiding pursuits. The gist of the President's messages:

CRIME The "Safe Streets and Crime Control Act of 1967" would give the Federal Government little new authority and not even the germ of a national police force. But it would provide the funds ($350 million in the next two years) to induce city and state police forces, courts and correctional agencies to come to grips with the problem.

Washington would give 90% of the money needed to finance modernization plans, foot 60% of the bill for crime-deterrent innovations, some of the more interesting of which have been suggested by Los Angeles' new police chief, Thomas J. Reddin (see The Law). It would also provide 50% of the construction cost of crime laboratories, community correction centers and police academies.

One innovation, said L.B.J., might be the appointment of community "service officers," who would know and maintain close relations with people in neighborhoods.

With their contacts in the slums, they could alert authorities to trouble, help stave off riots. Juvenile delinquents might also be rehabilitated more successfully in their home communities than in reform schools; a five-year California experiment along this line, said the President, has shown "dramatically impressive" success in turning errant youths from all-too-promising careers in crime.

Startling Facts. The President relied heavily on data accumulated during an 18-month study that is to be published later this week by the National Crime Commission headed by Under Secretary of State (and former Attorney General) Nicholas deB. Katzenbach. As summarized in his message, the report presented some startling new facts about crime. Some of them:

> Fifteen-year-olds commit more serious crimes than those in any other age group, with 16-year-olds close behind. Youths under 18 account for more than half of all burglary arrests.

> Relatively few major crimes are interracial. For the most part, criminals prey upon their own race and economic group.

> The cost of white-collar crime, such as embezzlement, consumer frauds and petty theft from businesses, "dwarfs" that of all crimes of violence. Property losses from both kinds of crime total more than $3 billion a year.

>More than 7,000,000 people come into contact with some agency of criminal justice each year. More than 400,000 are behind bars in any one day.

> At least half of the aggravated assaults, burglaries and larcenies are probably never reported. In some communities, only one-tenth may show up on police records.

>One-third of all arrests -- 2,000,000 a year -- are for drunkenness. If it were treated as a social problem, suggested Johnson, rather than a crime, the criminal enforcement apparatus would be relieved of a huge burden, leaving more time for more serious concerns.

The drive on crime would be left largely to the states and cities, but the President did ask Congress once again for passage of a firearms-control act, which would be one of the cheapest, yet probably one of the most effective crime-fighting tools. "Further delay," he said, "is unconscionable." And along with new guarantees of personal safety, he asked for a guarantee of personal privacy in a bill aimed at outlawing all wiretapping and electronic bugging, both private and public, except when national security is involved. In this request, the President is at odds with some important members of Congress, who favor limited wiretapping and bugging privileges for police forces.

YOUTH Yet hitting at crime from above, said Johnson, is not enough. "To speak of crime," he said, quoting the Crime Commission, "only in terms of the work of the police, the courts and the correctional apparatus alone is to refuse to face the fact that widespread crime implies a widespread failure by society as a whole." A much broader assault must be directed at the underground causes, and L.B.J.

outlined such an assault in his youth message. For crime is often one visible effect of poverty, and economic deprivation in youth sows a huge harvest of blighted promise and lost opportunity.

Johnson's list of the country's neglect of its youth was exhaustive. Some 14.5 million young under 17 live in families too poor to feed and house them adequately. One million will drop out of school this year, most to join the ranks of the unemployed. More than 3.5 million poor children who need medical help do not receive it and nearly two-thirds of all poor children have never visited a dentist.

At least ten nations have lower infant mortality rates than the U.S.; if the U.S.'s rate were as low as Sweden's, 40,-000 babies that now die each year would be saved.

The President noted nonetheless that the U.S. has sharply stepped up its aid to the young in recent years, from $3.5 billion for all federal programs benefiting young people in 1960 to more than $11.5 billion in the budget now before Congress. Much more, he said, needs to be done.

Head Start, the intensive educational program for poor preschoolers, should be widened so that it can help more very young children (three-year-olds) and older children, who often lose momentum when they enter regular class rooms. A not unimportant side benefit of Head Start gives medical and dental care to many children who otherwise would never see the inside of a doctor's or dentist's office.

"In short," said L.B.J. , "for poor children and their parents, Head Start has replaced the conviction of failure with the hope of success." Under Johnson's proposal, $135 million would be added to the $337 million already budgeted in the next fiscal year for the program, probably the most popular that the "War on Poverty" has introduced, and a particular Johnson favorite.

Pilot Program. The President urged that payments to the three million children who now receive social security -- because the family breadwinner has died, retired or is disabled -- be increased by an average 15%, at a cost of $350 million. Average benefits now, he noted, are only $52 a month. He also proposed a pilot program to ensure that 100,000 children in poverty areas can visit a dentist and 500,000 be examined by a doctor in the next year. To take care of the babies that are yet to be born, Johnson asked for legislation authorizing ten pilot centers to train health workers, look into the problems of child health, and provide care for 180,000 needy children and 10,000 mothers. There are in the U.S. today, he pointed out, only 12,000 trained pediatricians and 13,000 obstetricians, "far too few to provide adequate medical care."

The total cost of all his proposals would be $650 million. But in a number of them, some small and experimental, Johnson was clearly pointing the way to bigger programs he hopes to initiate in post-Viet Nam years, when there will be more room in the budget for the new social-welfare measures that he longs to add to those already under the umbrella of the Great Society. Meanwhile, in both its youth and its crime programs, the Johnson Administration aims to redeem the worst and to better the best.

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