THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Thursday, August 15, 1996             TAG: 9608150006
SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A18  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Editorial 
                                            LENGTH:   42 lines

VIOLENT CRIME BY YOUTHS IS DOWN STILL NOT SAFE ENOUGH

The unexpected 2.9 percent drop in the arrest rate of children for violent crimes in 1995, which was reported the other day by the U.S. Justice Department, is encouraging. The decline suggests that a myriad of responses - by legislators, police and courts and communities - to the epidemic of violent crime by youths may be producing some salutary results at long last.

The qualifying may is necessary because no one can be sure that countless initiatives from here to Hawaii to prevent and penalize youth violence really explain the gratifying reduction in the combined rate of arrest of youngsters age 10 to age 17 for murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.

There are fewer youths now than when youth-crime rates were skyrocketing in the 1980s. U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno rightly cautions that the number will again be increasing over the next 15 years. A climbing rate of violent youth crime seemingly is inevitable.

But the rise perhaps will be checked by efforts nationwide by a justifiably alarmed populace and public officials to counter violent youth crime. More and more localities are embracing community-based policing that cultivates cooperative relationships between law-enforcement and neighborhoods to combat criminality and focuses city services to improve the lives of low-income citizens.

Adding and improving youth-recreation programs; tightening code enforcement; cracking down on graffiti, rowdiness and public drunkenness that degrade the urban environment; confiscating concealed weapons; assigning disruptive schoolchildren to alternative programs; trying more violent youths as adults - such strategies may be making a difference.

But not enough of a difference, not yet. Rampant violent crime by youths blights localities and Americans' happiness. Crime has always been primarily a young man's game. But the criminals have been getting younger, much younger, and their easy access to firearms makes all too many of them as deadly as any adult: Murders by youths increased by 169 percent between 1984 and 1993.

Rearing children who don't commit crimes, thus curbing the plague of violence, ought to be a priority activity of every adult in every community in America. by CNB