TEEN CRIME

By Richard Lacayo

Congress made an agreeable discovery three years ago. Early in 1994, in an abrupt statistical spike, voters in large numbers started saying that crime was their No. 1 concern. So when the House and Senate passed the omnibus crime bill later that year, people actually noticed. Which is one reason why, in a sluggish political summer, when Washington is competing with Mars and Mike Tyson for some quality time with the rest of America, Congress is going after crime again. In May the House passed a bill that would give $1.6 billion to states that agree to toughen their handling of kids who commit serious felonies, in part by making it easier to try them as adults. Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee was pushing forward on a similar bill, in the hope of bringing it to a vote this month. "People are expecting us to do something about these violent teenagers," committee chairman Orrin Hatch complained as he tried to speed through more than 100 proposed amendments. "We've got to move on this."

In truth, the problem isn't quite as pressing as it was a few years ago. With crime rates dropping, so is juvenile crime. But felonies by kids had exploded over the previous 10 years, a legacy of the crack trade and armed gangs, so the recent decline is still a dip in a high plateau. From 1985 to 1995, juvenile arrests for violent crimes rose 67%. Perhaps a fifth of all violent crimes is the work of teens. "In America today, no population poses a greater threat to public safety than juvenile criminals," says Representative Bill McCollum, the Florida Republican who wrote the House version of the bill.

Some criminologists are also warning that a new wave of "superpredators" will soon hit the streets. In fatherless households and fractured neighborhoods, millions of four- to seven-year-olds, the baby boomers' own mini-boom, are headed for their teens. So Congress wants to make it easier to try juveniles accused of violent crimes as adults--and to incarcerate them in adult prisons. Under both the Senate bill and the House bill, states that want the federal dollars would have to make prosecutors and not judges the ones who decide whether a teenager charged with a serious violent felony or drug offense should be tried as an adult. To demonstrate that crimes really do carry punishments, states would also have to impose a rising scale of "graduated sanctions" for all juvenile offenses, beginning with the first, and keep adult-style criminal records on juvenile offenders. Under the present system, most such records are often closed, meaning prosecutors can't learn whether an accused youth is a repeat offender. "The juvenile justice system isn't working," says McCollum. "This bill puts consequences back into the law."

Over the past five years, however, every state except Hawaii has decided to allow some kids to be tried in adult criminal courts. Altogether, some 12,300 youths are prosecuted as adults each year in state courts. That is about 9% of all juveniles arrested for violent crimes and a 70% increase over the number who were tried as adults a decade ago. But if the bills become law, those numbers would climb further. Child-welfare advocates say that would effectively dissolve the separate system of justice for kids that dates to 1899, when Chicago established the nation's first juvenile court.

Supporters of the bills say they correct a problem created in 1974, when new legislation channeled nearly all young offenders to the juvenile system. What isn't clear is whether moving young criminals back to adult courts has much impact on crime. According to a recent study by the liberal National Center for Initiatives and Alternatives, Connecticut has the highest juvenile-to-adult transfer rate and Colorado the lowest, yet their youth-crime rates are the same. Since the 1970s, New York has been automatically trying as adults kids 16 and older charged with serious crimes. In the same period, its juvenile crime rates doubled.

The politics of juvenile crime can also get complicated. Republicans are unhappy over polls that show that a majority of Americans believe Democrats are just as capable of handling crime. But while Americans have largely soured on the idea of rehabilitation for adult offenders--even some liberal criminologists have conceded that the most ruthless teen felons must be locked up--polls also show most people to be less sure that children can't be turned back. "I'm afraid this bill will gobble up some juveniles who do not really fit the most extreme category," says Democrat Joseph Biden of Delaware, the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

One area in which Republicans could be getting out ahead of the public mood is in the provisions that would imprison kids with adults, though not in the same cells. While reportedly 8,000 teens are already housed with adults, federal rules require "sight and sound" separation, meaning juveniles cannot be within reach of adults. Some corrections officials say that requires a pointless division of facilities used by both populations--for instance, two exercise areas when one could be shared. The Senate bill would override the complexities of the sight-and-sound rule by imposing a "no physical contact" provision, which means that the same facilities could be used. But juvenile advocates say that breaking down the barriers would make kids prey to rape and other forms of abuse. Kids held for truancy, the most common reason for juvenile arrest, would be morsels for the older guys. "Children commit suicide eight times as often in jails as they do in juvenile-detention facilities," says Mark Soler, head of the Washington-based Youth Law Center.

The White House has proposed its own bill that puts more emphasis on money for crime-prevention measures, such as keeping schools open in the afternoon from 3 to 6, when almost half of juvenile crimes take place. While the Senate would allow states to use as much as 40% of the federal money they get for prevention programs, the House would require them to spend it all on law enforcement. The White House wants to require safety locks on guns to prevent kids from accidentally shooting other kids, a provision opposed by the National Rifle Association. "A juvenile-crime bill should crack down on gangs and guns," says senior adviser Rahm Emanuel. "If it doesn't do that, it is a juvenile-crime bill in name only."

Just naming the legislation has caused a fight. When McCollum introduced his House version last year, he called it the Violent Youth Predator Act. Insisting that "predator" was dehumanizing hype, Democrats demanded a change. McCollum backed off and called it the Juvenile Crime Control Act. But this isn't just a fight over crime. It's also a fight over which party is tougher on crime. In that one, harsh words can be as tempting as harsh sentences.

--Reported by Sally B. Donnelly/Washington

With reporting by Sally B. Donnelly/Washington