Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 26, 1995 TAG: 9503250014
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
While the overall crime rate has leveled off, and even dropped in some places, juvenile crime has soared. And not just youthful high-jinks stuff. Serious, violent, often horrifyingly brutal, juvenile crime. Youngsters of an age that once shot nothing but marbles now carry guns and shoot each other, their parents, anyone who gets in their way.
Since 1987, the state's juvenile arrest rate for murder has risen 242 percent. In less than 10 years, the number of those under age 14 arrested for murder has surged by 500 percent.
Allen last week spotlighted his new Commission on Juvenile Justice Reform by leading its members on a tour of the overcrowded, outdated Beaumont Juvenile Correctional Center near Richmond, home to some of the state's most dangerous children.
Yes, children - who in recent weeks have assaulted teachers and other staff members. Beaumont, once euphemistically called a ``learning center,'' now is definitely a prison. Behind the tall fence, topped with razor wire to prevent escapes, such assaults ''go on everyday,'' said an official. ``And let's not forget, if they're doing this to the staff, what do you think they're doing to weaker youth in the facility?''
Unfortunately, the governor used the opportunity to criticize the 1995 General Assembly for not including his requested $11.3 million for a new juvenile correctional center in a spending package for prison construction. In fact, the legislators appropriated $250,000 in planning funds for it - which, as Democratic lawmakers noted, should suffice for now, since the administration had yet even to choose a site for the facility. Allen says he'll try again to get the money for Beaumont when the General Assembly reconvenes for the veto-override session in April.
But get past the partisan bluster over the timing of the appropriation, and Allen is right about this: If Virginia is to have constructive treatment programs for youngsters who can be rehabilitated, there must be enough space to keep them separate from the incorrigibles. Conditions at Beaumont - constructed as a reform school in the 1920s, and now housing 325 youngsters in quarters designed for 200 - make this virtually impossible.
The governor, we trust, will also keep the principle in mind when Roanoke officials go to Richmond in May in search of $1.5 million in state funds to expand and renovate the city's Juvenile Detention Center at Coyner Springs. The local facility holds youngsters from Roanoke and several nearby jurisdictions until their cases are dealt with by the courts. It is, like Beaumont, overcrowded. As of Thursday, the 21-bed center housed 36 juveniles.
Also like Beaumont, it's outdated, built for school truants and stealers of hubcaps, and not the kids it's getting now, arrested for murder, rapes, assaults and drug trafficking. Often, too, the center must house juveniles already sentenced to state correctional units until the state can make room for them.
Roanoke has committed $1.2 million to double the bed capacity and modernize its facility, so that toughened young thugs - often in detention for the second or third time - can be separated from others. The state should match that amount.
The Allen administration has no less an obligation to help relieve dangerously overcrowded conditions in local and regional juvenile-detention homes than it has for the state's own facilities.
by CNB