The United States is suffering a frightening and unacceptable level of violent juvenile crime. Criminologists are nearly unanimous in predicting substantial continuing increases. The gravest danger is that many Americans don't understand the central nature of the problem and thus can't begin to deal with the available solutions.
The crisis is location-specific. The flood of juvenile predation emanates from bone-poor sections of big cities. In smaller cities, suburbs and rural areas, there are serious challenges with difficult youth, but with resourcefulness, the juvenile justice system there is truly effective. The problem is being dealt with.
Why then the inner cities' crisis? No recent record more dramatically answers that question than "No Matter How Loud I Shout" by Edward Humes (Simon & Schuster, 399 Pages. $24).
To make Mr. Humes' book possible, the juvenile court presiding judge of the nation's largest and most gang-infested city, Los Angeles, gave him access to the otherwise closed system for a year.
During that year, Mr. Humes observed proceedings, interviewed officials and even taught writing and poetry ("...there's not much I can do, there's no way out, my screams have no voice no matter how loud I shout...") to juveniles locked in detention.
Mr. Humes' book poignantly reinforces the observations and conclusions of many professionals, myself included.
The prime causes: systemic failure of schools, heavy concentrations of narcotics use, astronomic levels of children being born to children with no parenting skills or authority. There is rank poverty and multi-generational unemployment. Gangs are more likely to become established in large cities, and are difficult to dislodge. Worse, there is rampant synergy: The whole is far bigger than the sum of the parts.
Big-city governments are chronically short of cash. Money that may be available in the suburbs to staff programs for truants, incorrigibles and early offenders, simply is nonexistent. The city is overwhelmed by serious crime. Lesser felonies and misdemeanors tend to become decriminalized. Yet such minor criminal and "pre-criminal" behavior is prelude to violent crimes. Thus, children absorb a generalized contempt for the "system" and older miscreants use younger juveniles to front for them, knowing an arrest will be inconsequential.
