ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, June 26, 1996 TAG: 9606260019
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
YOUR CHANCES of becoming a victim of violent crime, after dropping for several years, are about to go up again.
Or so many experts fear. The source of their concern is that crime among juveniles is getting worse - it tends to be a young man's game, anyway - and the number of 14- to 17-year-olds in America is expected to grow 23 percent over the next decade.
But why must demography be destiny? Youthful aggressiveness - particularly, male youthful aggressiveness - may spring from natural sources, but most young males don't become criminals. Clearly, how aggressiveness is manifested and channeled is subject to environmental influences.
Parental influence is, as a rule, the most important such influence, and is likely to remain so. But it isn't the only one - and where it breaks down, other interventions are needed. A good example is the effort in Roanoke to reduce school absenteeism. Superintendent Wayne Harris has set a goal of reducing the number of students who miss more than 10 days of school by 10 percent per year. After one year, Harris reported this week to the School Board, several city schools appear to be on track.
A lowered crime rate is not the only benefit of reduced school absenteeism, of course, but it is among the likely benefits. This may seem a stretch, linking the relatively trivial offense of playing hooky to serious crimes like assault and murder. But refusing to take truancy lightly fits in with a growing consensus among community leaders and law-enforcement officials in America about the way to reduce serious juvenile crime: earlier intervention in general, and more forceful interventions when minor transgressions occur - before patterns of misbehavior escalate into major wrongdoing.
As noted recently in The Christian Science Monitor, this emerging consensus transcends the old liberal-conservative argument about prevention vs. punishment. It is both: Early intervention can prevent crime; appropriate punishment can be a valuable kind of intervention.
Specifically, The Monitor reports, the consensus includes agreement that kids should be kept in school, that the link between child abuse and child criminals should be recognized, that records should be shared among those involved with youth rehabilitation, and that petty offenses should bring swift and meaningful sanctions.
Getting tough on truancy is related, in varying degrees, to all four points. School-attendance records are among those that could be more widely shared. Kids in school, occupied in productive pursuits, are not on the streets engaged in destructive (including self-destructive) activities. Truancy is now recognized as an early-warning sign that, if uncorrected, leads to worse trouble later.
But truancy and child abuse? Well, child abuse can take many forms - and one, surely, is not caring enough about a child to set limits, or to teach him or her that bad actions have bad consequences, or to ensure that he or she is in school, learning. Fighting truancy is a worthy project for schools. It should be for parents, too.
LENGTH: Medium: 57 linesby CNB