I wouldn't be surprised if some of you are at least a bit confused
about the conflicting messages we are hearing these days about youth crime in America. We are, of course, confronted almost daily with a seemingly steady stream of shocking stories about schoolyard massacres in communities from
Jonesboro, AR to Edinboro, PA, and, of course, the horror of last spring's devastation in Littleton, Colorado is still fresh in our minds and heavy on our hearts.
On the other hand, there has been lots of good news -- great
news -- about crime levels coming down...and coming down fast. The FBI announced recently that serious crime had dropped seven percent in 1998. Homicide has declined nationally for seven straight years, now down to a level not
seen in this country for about thirty years!
There are a host of reasons for this downturn, not the least of which involves grassroots efforts to tackle the crime problem. Like never before, Americans are feeling hopeful
and energized by the decline in crime. They are beginning to sense that they can make a difference in their neighborhoods. Rather than hiding behind double-locked doors, they are investing their time to help rebuild communities
and getting involved in anti-crime initiatives.
There is, however, much more to the "Great 1990s Crime Drop Story" that doesn't quite show up in the rosy crime statistics. While recent progress is encouraging,
after the experience of the crack era of the late 1980s when youth crime levels soared, we surely have a long way to go before we can begin to claim victory over youth violence. Youth crime is down, but not out. The rate of
youth violence homicide, for example, is still twice the level it was before crack, gangs and guns devastated our cities.
The rate of violence -- and youth violence in particular -- began to explode in the mid-1980s with the
emergence of crack cocaine in many American cities. Youngsters were heavily recruited into the crack selling business; these young and brazen street merchants were supplied guns to help them survive this fiercely competitive and
volatile, emerging drug market. But now that the deadly drug wars of the past have been settled, the extent of crack-related violence is leveling off as well.
In fact, a closer examination of recent trends reveals that
the declines are predominantly among minority youth in large urban centers -- cities such as New York, Boston and Chicago which have directed intensive enforcement efforts against drugs, street gangs and illegal guns. Even while rates
of urban youth violence are on a downward trend, however, suburban and rural areas are seeing signs of increasing gang affiliation and identification in their communities.
While the devastation associated with crack may have
been fleeting, our problems are not over-not even close. We still must deal with longer-term and chronic issues--from television to supervision (too much of one, too little of the other), and from alienation to access to deadly
weapons. The shootings in Jonesboro, West Paducah, and Littleton may be unusual and extraordinary, but they are the tip of a much larger iceberg of anti-social behavior increasingly exhibited by children.
Let's talk for a
moment about guns, once again a front-burner political issue-and rightly so-ever since the Littleton tragedy. Guns certainly are far more lethal in a number of respects. A 14-year-old armed with a gun is far more menacing than a
44-year-old with a gun. While the teen may be untrained in using a firearm, he is more willing to pull the trigger -- without fully considering the consequences for himself, much less for his victims.
Now, of course,
teenagers have always been impulsive, impatient, and imprudent -- one might call them "temporary sociopaths." But now they're armed. There has been a teenage arms race -- some kids carrying weapons offensive purposes,
others carrying equally powerful guns for self-defense. Still others tote guns to look tough and thereby earn the respect of their peers.
As a result, over the past decade, the number of teens who have killed with a gun
-- particularly a handgun -- has doubled, while the number of kids who have killed with all other weapons combined has remained virtually constant.
Fortunately, there has been some improvement with efforts to crack down on
guns. Hopefully we will continue to emphasize firearm restrictions for juveniles, tracing of illegal guns to their source as well as gun confiscation initiatives, and other strategies to disarm children.
Now talk about
really bad ideas, in the wake of the tragic string of school shootings, a Georgia legislator proposed arming school teachers and training them to shoot. As odd as this may sound, this lawmaker actually had logic -- although flawed --
behind his bizarre proposal. It is his belief that ever since the Congress declared schools to be "gun-free zones" that a would-be shooter could expect no opposition to his assault on the schoolyard.
But rather
than a deterrent, arming teachers would likely encourage more violence. It would provide the challenge and the opportunity for a disgruntled student to shoot it out with the faculty. More generally, for teachers,
marksmanship is only about A's and B's, not guns and ammo. Teachers should educate students, not execute them.
Above all, the most significant change in our youth population, in cities and in suburbs, has been in
attitude. This new generation of youngsters is more inclined to resort to violence over seemingly trivial issues-over a pair of Nikes, a leather jacket, a romantic brush-off, even a challenging glance -- or over no reason at
all. They say that life is cheap; for some, murder is even cheaper.
Almost every week we are shocked by yet another instance of senseless teenage violence. A 13-year-old Miami boy killed a homeless man in a
dispute over a piece of pizza. In Independence, Missouri, as middle America as you can get, a teenager killed an ice cream man when the refused to give him a free frozen treat. And a Cincinnati teenager shot his neighbor
because she was hogging the telephone.
Part of this change in attitude reflects a general trend in America toward a reduction in moral responsibility, affecting kids and adults alike. At the same time that we have
de-emphasized personal responsibility, we have glamorized violence in our culture -- through our movies, our heroes, even the clothes we wear.
There has been a lot of discussion in recent years concerning media violence, and I
don't want to rehash all the points. Yet, I am disturbed that we're going in the wrong direction with violence ratings and now the V-Chip, designed to allow parents to have remote control -- all the way from the office -- on what
their kids watch on TV.
Ratings, you see, do more to advise kids on what they must see than to guide parents on what their kids mustn't see. Experimental studies have clearly shown that teenagers are attracted most to TV
programs and films that carry an R rating or a parental warning. Of course, if you're not part of the "mature audience," then that must make you immature ...and what kid wants that?
The introduction of movie
ratings years ago encouraged film-makers to turn up the violence for the sake of ticket sales. Movies got more violent, not less. Likewise, TV writers can now guiltlessly infuse their programming with even more blood and guts by
appealing to the parental control over the V-chip. "You parents," they can say, "you've got the power, you've got the control. If you don't want your kids to watch Friday the 13th, Part 62, then chip it out."
But the V-chip will fail, my friends. First of all, it will take at least six to ten years before all TV sets in every American home are equipped with one. But, how long will it take until parents forget how to
program their V-chip (these are the same folks whose VCRs constantly flash 12:00)? And how long will it take until parents give in the nagging of their kids to forget about the V-chip. Or how long will it take until Johnnie
finds a friend to visit whose parents don't really care about choosing their child's entertainment?
Actually, violence in television and film is relatively tame. They represent passive forms of entertainment, as compared
to the more active participation provided by video games. Rather than just sit on the livingroom couch and witness a massacre on television, a child can cybernetically kill on demand -- and learn to enjoy it.
Christmas
1997, for example, saw the release of Postal, a game in which the player goes berserk killing anything or anyone that moves. The game box boasts of "mass murder opportunities" and the thrills of gunning down an entire high
school marching band.
The latest offering is Kingpin: Life of Crime. There is an option for a "Less violent installation." But that's sort of like non-alcoholic beer! Not a lot of people
choose beer for the taste; not a lot play Kingpin for the realistic urban scenery.
Now I recognize that all these games are fantasy...make believe. But with multimedia and advanced graphics, the line between virtual
reality and stark reality can become rather thin.
And then there is the Internet -- the World Wide Worry for parents. Of course, we can buy parental screening software. I'm a good parent. I use a filter
for my son's AOL account... and monitor it, too. But then last week I found left in my computer drive a diskette that his friend had brought over which contained some images that I'd rather not describe. We cannot rely on
technology to protect our children.
I don't mean to overdo it here with problems associated with the media glorification of violence that is desensitizing our kids. But since children do spend more time in front of their
TV and computer monitors than listening to teachers or parents combined, this is no small problem. Actually, the fundamental problem is not so much what our kids are watching, but who is watching kids.
At this juncture,
as many as 60% of children in America do not have full-time parental supervision, either living with a single parent who works full-time or in a two-parent household with both parents working full-time.
Now, I know what you're
thinking...lots of kids are quite able to take care of themselves and don't need mommy or daddy home all the time. But the lack of parental supervision for very young children is nearly as great. As many as 49% of children under
age six do not have the benefit of full-time parenting.
Now I know what you're thinking...Many children enjoy suitable, substitute supervision provided by friends and relatives, neighbors, in day-care. Sure, but far too
many do not. By the latest estimate, 5-million school children do not normally have adult supervision.
I do not mean to imply any special blame on the part of parents, and single mothers in particular. That would be
terribly unfair. Scapegoating is a national pastime, and there has been too much parental figure-pointing already. We tend to blame parents -- and especially mothers -- for every bad thing their kids do.
While some
parents are terribly ill-prepared and unmotivated for the critical task of raising children, most parents are well-meaning and would like to have a greater role in their children's lives. However, many families lack the support to
control and guide their children. We should assist parents, not assail them.
Now, lots of people like to point to the breakdown of the family for the problems that we face in our society. Yet the issue is much
broader. Because of deep funding cuts in support programs for youth -- from after-school care to summertime recreation, from mentoring to education -- as a nation, we are missing the fleeting opportunity to compensate for the
diminished role of the family.
As a consequence, children spend too little time engaged in structured activity with positive role models, and too much time "hanging out" on the street or at the mall, or just at home
watching a few savage killings on television for the sake of entertainment. Bored and idle, our children have just too much time on their hands, too much time to kill -- perhaps literally.
This concern is clearly
reflected in the time-of-day patterns of juvenile violence. The prime-time for juvenile crime is during the after-school hours, from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., and not after midnight when curfew laws might be contemplated. Nearly half
the violent offenses by juveniles occur after the school bell rings and before parents get home from work to supervise their kids.
I am pleased to see that the Clinton Administration is beginning to push the idea of
after-school programs as are many local communities -- not just sports, but drama and music (violins rather than violence). However, we must be sure to do it in the right way.
Many schools have instituted after-school
programs yet place a variety of qualifying restrictions upon them. For example, a child must have a certain grade average or not have had disciplinary problems. Some programs expect parents to provide transportation home.
So, the kids who need after-school programs the most are excluded from participating.
I mentioned curfews earlier. Hundreds of cities across America have instituted them. Of course, nowhere is the juvenile
curfew law any stricter than in New Orleans (8 p.m. on weekdays, and 9 p.m. on weekends), and in Minnesota, there's even a teen curfew in the local shopping mall.
I'm not a big fan of curfews. It's not that they're so
bad, it's just that they're not that good. Midnight curfews attempt to incapacitate kids at the very time of day when very few juvenile crimes occur anyway. After midnight, most teens are in bed asleep. Curfews essentially
prohibit kids from committing crimes while asleep! Of course, those who are out misbehaving -- whether it be vandalism or just acting rowdy -- should be punished, but specifically for the misbehavior itself.
What really
frustrates me is that we reject and ridicule positive steps like midnight basketball yet embrace negative steps like midnight curfews. We'd much prefer to say "no" than "yes."
Whoever called us
babyboomer parents the permissive generation really hasn't been listening to the messages. We're always telling our kids don't. Don't do drugs, don't carry guns, don't smoke, don't have unsafe sex, don't watch Beevis and
Butthead or South Park, don't play Mortal Kombat . Don't go out after 11:00. Don't do this. Don't do that.
But what can they do? In order to save tax dollars, we've taken a ValuJet approach to
childhood... "no frills." We've closed down or neglected our recreation centers, pools, ball fields. We've closed down just about everything. We've closed down childhood.
So far I've given you
the bad news; now for the really bad news. As if the situation with youth violence was not bad enough already, future demographics -- or population changes -- may make matters even worse.
There are now 40 million
children in this country under the age of ten -- this is the "babyboomergang" cohort, the children of the babyboomers. There are now more young children in the population than at any time since the original baby-boomers were
in grade school. This newest group of youngsters will be teenagers before you can say "juvenile crime wave."
By the year 2005, the number of teens, ages 14-17, will swell by over 15%, which may indeed bring
increased problems of teen suicide, venereal disease, drug abuse, joblessness, and, of course, violence. The growth in the youth population will be particularly great among blacks and Hispanics -- about 20% over the next six years.
Given the difficult conditions in which many of these youngsters grow up -- with inferior schools, disrupted homes, and violence-torn neighborhoods, many more teenagers will be at-risk in the years ahead.
Looking ahead, I see a glooming, although cloudy picture. Much about the future remains in doubt. No one can say how just many police officers will be patrolling the streets in 2005. No one can say how many new
prison beds we'll have six years from now. We don't even know which political party will then control Congress or even the White House. But we do know -- very well -- how many 15 year-olds we'll have in 2005. Just about
the number of nine year olds we have today. It's amazing, these youngsters get a year older every single year!
So given the expected growth in the population of teenagers, given the worsening conditions in which children
are being raised, given the breakdown of all of our institutions as well as of our cultural norms, given our wholesale disinvestment in youth, we face a future wave of juvenile violence that could make the 1990s look like the good old days.
Now the hopeful news, and there is indeed some, is that there is still time to stem the tide -- to prevent the next wave of youth crime. But we must act now while this baby-boomerang generation is still young and
impressionable, and will be impressed with what a teacher, a preacher, or some other authority figure has to say. If we wait until these children reach their teenage years and the next crime wave is upon us, it may be too late to do
much about it. It is far easier and considerably less expensive to build the child than to rebuild the teen. It is better to "prehabilitate," than need to rehabilitate.
Responding to these worrisome
projections on future levels of youth crime, Attorney General Janet Reno remarked that "Demographics do not have to be destiny," and she is absolutely correct. It is far from certain that the level of youth violence will
once again rise. What is certain, however, is that we will have far more kids at-risk. Whether the next generation of teenagers is any more or less violent their predecessors largely rests on our shoulders and depends on our
willingness to invest in kids.
So the challenge for the future is how best to deal with youth violence. Unfortunately, we seem to be obsessed with quick and easy solutions that won't work, such as the wholesale transfer
of juveniles to the adult court, boot camps, three strikes, the V-Chip, the death penalty, chain gangs, and in schools, such things as student uniforms, banning trench coats and certain T-shirts, metal detectors, and inflexible zero
tolerance policies toward threats -- lot's of quick fixes, at the expense of long-term and difficult solutions that will work, such as providing preteens with strong, positive role models, quality schools, and recreation programs.
Let me say a few words about the latest group of quick-fix solutions for school violence:
Metal detectors: Metal detectors are hardly foolproof; there are many other ways in which a student can smuggle weapons
past these devices. Besides, a vengeful student can still kill his victims in the school yard (like in Jonesboro, Arkansas) or even on the bus. Even worse, the presence of metal detectors may lull concerned teachers and parents
into believing falsely that guns are no longer a problem at school.
"Katie bar the door": A number of schools have decided to lock all school entrances and exits in order to limit access. A new school
construction project near me has been modified to eliminate doors altogether. I shudder to think how children might be trapped should a fire break out in a classroom or should a disgruntled student open fire in the hall.
Observe warning signs and respond aggressively: There are plenty of warning signs which are, however, only clear after the fact. Hindsight is 20/20. Using one of several publicized lists of red flags would identify
hundreds of thousands of would-be shooters, well over 99% of whom wouldn't harm anyone. In fact, targeting these "misfits" or "social outcasts" could backfire by further singling them out in a negative way.
They would feel, "Not only are the students against me, but so are the teachers and the principal."
Zero-tolerance for threats and weapons: Schools across America have instituted zero tolerance policies for
threats and weapons. Applied rigidly, this has resulted in the suspension of elementary school children in Georgia for making a list of people they wanted to hurt (including the Spice Girls and Barney, the purple dinosaur), a girl in
Utah who brought the wrong lunch bag to school which contained an apple and a peering knife, and a second grader in Maryland who made a gun out of construction paper. Zero ignorance and a rational level of tolerance make far greater
sense in practice.
Not only are they destined to fail, but these quick-fix solutions may also detract from the important task of investing in our children. Of course, I am hardly the first person to advocate for
prevention. Many policy-makers have been pushing prevention programs -- from education to recreation, but not always prevention that is early enough -- that is, prevention with emphasis on the "pre."
For
example, anti-violence curricula promoting conflict resolution skills and peer mediation strategies have been introduced in many high schools across America. But that's far too little and much too late. Those teens whom we most
need to reach are often not in high school. And if they are in high school, they're not listening. If they're listening, they don't care.
We must instead locate these programmatic efforts in the primary grades where
we can make a significant difference in the attitudes and behaviors of children before they are seduced by the temptations of street thrills, gang membership, drugs and crime. Of course, we then must be patient, for we will not see an
impact of this investment on the crime problem for a number of years. Patience, unfortunately, is not part of the American way.
Let me close with a literary reference....I'm told that this technique tends to make a
speaker appear particularly well-informed (and I could sure use that!).
In the 1989 film Batman, the Joker, played by Jack Nicholson, repeatedly warned his rivals, Think about the future." Well, if we don't
think about the future and aggressively prepare for it now, then the joke, my friends, will be on us.
Thank you all very much for your time and attention.
