THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 30, 1995 TAG: 9505270003
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
Teenage boys with guns.
Amid the good news about the decline in serious-crime rates - locally and nationwide - is the disquieting rise in murderousness by youths. This murderousness will worsen as current preteens become teenagers.
Governor Allen, calling for more prisons, warns of the violence ahead. Attorney General James S. Gilmore III last week proposed to the Governor's Commission on the Juvenile Justice System fundamental reforms to deal with ``a level of violent, brutal juvenile who is not a delinquent but a criminal.''
The attorney general noted that ``between 1980 and 1993, Virginia's rate of juvenile arrests for murder and non-negligent manslaughter increased more than twice as much as the national rate.''
The FBI reports that from 1985 to 1993, homicides committed by 18- to 24-year old males in the United States increased 65 percent. More dismaying was the 165 percent increase in homicides by 14- to 17-year-olds.
Baby boomers are aging. Homicide statistics reflect the trend: Murders by adults have declined 20 percent.
The serious-crime statistics overall also reflect the maturing of the baby boomers. Crime is largely a young person's game, primarily a young male's. Thus the expectation of rising violence in the near future.
Revamping the juvenile-justice system in Virginia is an essential component of any strategy for blunting the attack. Protecting the public from youths identified as violent is an inescapable obligation of government.
But the needed reforms won't come cheap. Virginia almost surely will require more youth correctional facilities and programs, including education and job training.
Meanwhile, much needs to be done at the grass roots. Rebuilding families and communities is the way to create neighborhoods where youngsters are nurtured instead of being abused.
The privately funded Committee for Economic Development, which is headquartered in New York, recently published a study aimed at rallying corporate America to support efforts to breathe new life into central cities.
Disintegration of families and communities accelerated in the post-World War II years as manufacturing, distribution and other blue-collar industries withered or migrated to green pastures.
In Hampton Roads, the central cities of Norfolk, Portsmouth and Newport News continue to struggle to combat the ills that thrive in poverty clusters: illegitimacy, welfare, ignorance, aimlessness, substance abuse, criminality. . are Americans' nightmare.
The Committee for Economic Development has identified many ways in which businesses could help revive inner cities. Surely some businesses could benefit from placing some of their manufacturing or distribution operations on inexpensive inner-city real estate near good roads, modern ports and rail and air services. That should especially be so if the acreage is in enterprise zones offering tax breaks and other financial enticements to investors.
Greater business involvement in central cities would be extremely helpful all around. The best antipoverty program is a job. The best pro-family and anticriminal-violence program, too. by CNB