THE FALSE PROPHETS SHOULD TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT OUR CRIMINALIZED YOUTH

Let's finger some false prophets who often escape public ridicule
because enough time has elapsed since they made their foolish
predictions.

Here's that salesman of the virtues, Bill Bennett, who once co-chaired
the Council on Crime in America, and issued a 1996 report titled "The
State of Violent Crime in America," containing these ominous words and
(entirely inaccurate) predictions: "America is a ticking violent crime
bomb. Rates of violent juvenile crime and weapons offenses have been
increasing dramatically, and by the year 2000, could spiral out of
control."

These were the years when headline-seeking criminologists like John
Dilulio of Princeton and Northeastern's James Alan Fox painted lurid
scenarios of "superpredators," meaning urban youth of color, swelling
Generation Y by as much as 24 percent.

In fact, violent juvenile crime rates have plunged during the 1990s,
utterly confounding Bennett, Dilulio and the others. The false
prophets continue to receive handsome salaries, lecture fees and the
respectful attention of book reviewers. The damage wrought by their
predictions lives on in the form of a continuing hysteria about youth
crime and the criminalizing of minority youth, of youth from certain
neighborhoods and ethnic origins.

"The law has taken many terrible turns in the last few years, and the
pit of the law is the juvenile justice system." This is Catherine
Campbell, a civil rights attorney in Fresno, Calif. ". . A lot of it
begins with putting the kids of poor parents into foster care. That's
how authorities inspire hatred, anger, frustration and feelings of
worthlessness. . . . With only a few months of that, most kids are
pretty much destroyed. They are 'criminalized' when their behavior
crosses the almost unavoidable line of criminal behavior."

Our society has made criminal behavior that wasn't criminal 10 years
ago. The point is not just that youth is criminalized, but that
certain kids are especially criminalized, kids from bad
neighborhoods.

Campbell again: "The laws have changed, and they are so awful. Take
civil commitment. Used to be the wisdom was you can't predict criminal
behavior. Now the wisdom is that a criminal is everyone who has
committed a crime. He's a criminal now and will be forever. Nowhere is
this theory more controlling than as to sex crimes. I had a client who
at age 15 had sex with a 7-year-old. Both boys . . . . He was charged
and convicted of lewd and lascivious behavior. He went to California
Youth Authority. There, he was diagnosed by diabolical shrinks as a
sexual psychopath, and they kept him in two years longer than his
sentence based on new civil commitment laws that allow that to happen.
He finally got out when some shrink said the kid's gay, let him go.
They extended this kid's term every time he had sex (he lived with
other gay boys) or masturbated!"

They get them, and then if they're poor, of color, angry or
unsuccessful in school, they keep them. Through all means available,
they keep them in the criminal system. They search them, harass them,
follow them, watch who they talk with, what they wear. The most minor
infraction - and they are back in jail

There are no middle-class gangs, there are only lower-class gangs. And
it's a crime to be in a gang, and it's more time in jail or prison if
a crime is gang-related. You can't really survive on the streets in
those bad neighborhoods without being in a gang (if you're male), so
you're criminal just because you're alive and leave the house. And, of
course, the age at which you are an adult for jail and prison
eligibility is lower every year.

The drug laws are key to criminalizing youth. The trick is to take
something almost everybody does, and then make it a crime. That way
you can pick and choose who you want to mess with.

For instance, in California, a black teenager is six times more likely
to be incarcerated for a first-time violent offense than a white kid.
A black teenager is 48 times (yes, you read that right, 48) more
likely to do time for a drug offense than a white kid. In fact, young
people of color display the largest declines and lowest rates of drug
abuse of any group."

Maybe those false prophets, Bennett, Dilulio and the others, could
kick off the new year by drawing attention to such facts.