DRUG ENVIRONMENT DISTORTS YOUTHS' UPBRINGING

Expert: 'There are animals who take better care of their young' than
adults in drug dens

DETROIT -- Imagine a typical drug house -- one plagued with the dank
smell of urine-soaked floors and long-ignored hygiene. A place where
dignity is cashed in for degradation and money buys brief departures
from reality.

Such squalor hardly is conducive to nurturing young children. Yet it's
an environment that is distorting the lives of thousands of children
in America's cities, said Carl Taylor, a Michigan State University
criminologist whose book, Girls, Gangs, Women and Drugs, offers a
disturbing glimpse into Detroit dope houses.

"It totally destroys the kids. Seeing drugs and illicit sex. It's an
ill-gotten lifestyle not fit for an adult, never mind a child," Taylor
said. "Crack houses are a level of Dante's Inferno. They are truly
hell."

It's believed that the 6-year-old boy accused of shooting his
first-grade classmate at school Tuesday in Mt. Morris Township has
spent much of his young life in a crack house. Neighbors have said the
boy would scrape for food and usually create his own means of getting
to school.

"The needs of a child living in a crack house are completely neglected
in terms of food, clothes and attention," said Gary Anderson, the
director of Michigan State's social work school. "The adults are all
consumed by their needs and addictions. So the predominant impact on
the children is neglect."

Taylor said "there are animals who take better care of their young"
than the adults in drug dens.

In Detroit, where police conduct as many as two dozen raids a week in
suspected crack houses, young children are sometimes found inside.
Teens, though, are often found running the drug houses, said Officer
Octavious Miles, a former narcotics officer now assigned to the
department's public affairs unit.

"It's not common to find young children in drug houses, but it does
happen," Miles said. Officers are required to contact the department's
child abuse unit and social workers at the Michigan Family
Independence Agency.

Fred Mester knows well the end result of such deprived lives. As an
Oakland County Circuit Court judge, Mester has handed stiff jail
sentences to many young men who he believes grew up in or around crack
houses.

"You wish there was some way where there could have been some
intervention," Mester said. "The role models for these kids are the
guys driving nice cars and making big money selling drugs on the corner."

The young products of dope house upbringing take a toll on society,
said Pamela Ludolph, a psychologist at the University of Michigan.

"It's very important for us as a society to take these children on as
an issue. We need to take care of them," she said. "Leaving them in a
crack house will lower their intellectual ability and make them more
inclined to impulsiveness and aggressive behavior. You end up with
somebody who is really not someone we want in our society."