U.S. VIOLENCE WORSE: STUDY

'Society In Deep Trouble' Because Of Policies, It Says

WASHINGTON - Three decades after a landmark study found crime and poverty
tearing away at the nation's fabric, a sobering update released yesterday
concludes that the U.S. has moved backward in fighting these ills and
remains "a society in deep trouble" because of misguided policies.

The widely publicized decline in crime rates during the 1990s has stemmed
primarily from unusually high levels of prosperity, the report said, and
masks what it called society's failure to come to grips with underlying
causes of violence and illegal activity.

In particular, the report - issued by the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation,
a nonprofit research group - said violence is much more prevalent today
than 30 years ago and the odds of dying in a violent crime remain much
higher in the U.S. than in most other industrialized nations.

Misguided policies, foundation members said, have included a national
preoccupation with hard-line policies - building prisons, waging the war on
illegal drugs and creating "zero tolerance" policies toward criminals.
These get-tough approaches have come at the expense of longer-term
solutions such as early intervention programs for troubled youth, job
training and drug rehabilitation programs, the report said.

"Prisons have become our nation's substitute for effective policies on
crime, drugs, mental illness, housing, poverty and employment of the
hardest to employ," the report said.

In part, the report suggested, the crime increase is because the number of
firearms has doubled to nearly 200 million.

Worse yet, crime has been exacerbated by a "vast and shameful inequality in
income, wealth and opportunity," the report said, noting that more than one
quarter of U.S. children live in poverty.

Several White House officials and law-enforcement experts questioned key
findings.

The Eisenhower Foundation's contention that the drug war has not worked,
for instance, flies in the face of data showing a recent decline in
consumption among young people and other users, said Bob Weiner,
spokesperson for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

"This is a widely respected group, and I hope they've done their homework.
But . . . there is a reality to the fact that America is safer."

A number of the original staff members contributed to the new report.
Elliott Currie, a criminologist, was one of them.

"I would not really have dreamed in 1969 that violent crime would get so
much worse in the '80s and early '90s and that I'd be helping write a
report saying that we have made so few gains."