Combating a culture of violence.

• Author: Hunzeker, Donna
• Position: Includes related articles

Crime control and public safety seem to beg for a government answer. But can state lawmakers hope to stem the mayhem?

In late 1992, during a feel-good lull before the inauguration of a new, young president, Americans were optimistic about many things. More than two-thirds of voters in a national news service poll responded with confidence that more Americans who want work would find it. Almost equal numbers of people felt optimistic that the environment and education would improve.

But the same poll told a dreary tale of the public's view of efforts to control crime. Fewer than a third of Americans believed that crime would decrease. A solution for health-care problems was the only social issue about which they felt almost equally pessimistic.

Indeed, in the year that has passed since that poll, the nightly news about crime and violence has given the public little to be optimistic about. Carjackings, tourist murders and drive-by shootings have become part of the American landscape. And as fear grows, so does crime as a political issue. The menace of gangs and violent crimes committed by youths triggered special legislative sessions in Colorado, Utah and Florida late last year.

By the fall elections, support swelled for local taxes and state bond issues related to fighting crime; voters in Washington passed a "three strikes you're out" persistent offender act; Texas voters approved no-bail provisions for sex offenders and other violent criminals, as well as $1 billion for new prisons; and tough-on-crime stances became paramount in New York City's mayoral contest, the governor's race in Virginia and other campaigns around the country. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers who had been bickering for months, even years, over crime legislation quickly passed a new national crime bill. (At year's end, House and Senate differences were being reconciled.) Soon after, Congress resurrected and passed the Brady gun-control bill. If there is a nonpartisan issue left, it is probably crime. The old liberal and conservative labels just don't seem to apply anymore.

Criminals Are Younger, Angrier

However, it is not accurate to say that there is a new crime wave in this country. Overall rates of crime--violent and property offenses considered together and reported as rates per 100,000 inhabitants--have actually declined slightly over the past five years. But what the data increasingly suggest is that the angry young man we have always blamed for crime is becoming both angrier and younger.

The violent crime rate has risen 19 percent in the past five years and 41 percent since 1983. Arrests of juveniles under 18 years of age for violent offenses increased more than 57 percent between 1983 and 1992. Over the same period, juvenile arrests for property crimes rose a comparatively modest 11 percent and for drug violations only about 7 percent. But weapons violations among juveniles jumped 117 percent, and a 128 percent increase was reported in those charged with murder and non-negligent manslaughter. Use of firearms in violent crime continues to rise among all age groups, according to Uniform Crime Reports of the FBI, but most dramatically among young people.

While there has been an upward trend in rates of violent crime among both white and black youths, rates among young, black men continue to exceed any other racial group. Civil rights leaders worry about how to deal with the alarming frequency of black-on-black violent crimes, without that attention further stigmatizing young, black men or making crime seem a "black problem."

Some of the recent statistics are consistent with historical trends, especially those having to do with location and population density. Cities continue to experience twice as much crime as the suburbs, and rural counties half that of the suburbs.

"America has always been violent," says Laura Ross Greiner of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado in Boulder. "It's the degree to which it now involves kids that is, or should be, disturbing." An analysis of homicide in Colorado recently completed by the center shows that the state reflects what is happening nationwide. The report says Colorado has experienced since 1988 a nearly 300 percent increase in homicide rates for offenders between the ages of 15 and 19, and gang-related murders contribute to that increase.

This picture of crime--its increasingly violent nature, who commits it and where--is consistent with what experts tell us about why we have crime and violence. It also aids in developing policy responses that can prevent crime and protect the public. Experts generally correlate crime and violence with the following issues, some of which overlap to the point of blurred distinctions:

* Poverty and associated community disintegration. That most households in the suburbs contain people who are employed and economically stable has as much to do with their relative safety as does any police or punishment policy. Further, children and adolescents continue to be disproportionately represented among the poor in this country. Neighborhoods and towns outside of inner cities also tend to be made up of people who are relatively well educated and expect the same of their children. In drawing a demographic profile of the prison population, Harold Hodgkinson of the Center for Demographic Policy in Alexandria, Va., includes the fact that 70 percent of adult prisoners are high school dropouts.

* Family dysfunction and disassociation. U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno last year lent new credibility to the link between families and crime when she spoke of children and families in crisis...