JUVENILE INFORMANTS

Assemblyman Scott Baugh says he is "not interested in a draconian approach"
to the issue of using young people as informants in drug cases. "But I do
want to stop the use of juvenile informants in situations where they can be
harmed or killed." That's why he is working on a bill to outlaw the
practice in California.

The legislative effort comes in the wake of the murder of 17-year-old Chad
Macdonald of Yorba Linda after a trip to an alleged drug house in Norwalk.
Although the Brea police (who provide police services or Yorba Linda) say
Mr. MacDonald wasn't working for them that day, they do acknowledge that he
did do some undercover buys after being caught in January with
methamphetamine.

Since announcing last week that he planned such a bill, Mr. Baugh's office
has heard from numerous law enforcement agencies and juvenile justice
experts, talked with Democratic state Sen. John Burton of San Francisco,
who had also planned such a bill, and worked to refine the idea.

The main complicating issue, they have discovered, is that police agencies
do use juveniles in "sting" operations to catch people who sell cigarettes
or alcohol to underage juveniles, and the agencies don't want to give up
that capacity. The arguments have some validity.

Cigarettes and alcohol are sold legally and openly to adults. Young people
who decide to become involved in tobacco and alcohol "sting" operations
usually volunteer rarely comes as a result of a legal problem, such as a
drug possession arrest, which the police might use as leverage with the
offender, asking for help on police business in exchange for a lighter
penalty.

And, there's hardly ever any danger in a young person going into a
convenience or liquor store, asking for something reserved for adults, and
seeing if the clerk "cards" them or not.

We have doubts about using kids for cigarettes and alcohol, but there's
little question that it's less inherently dangerous than asking them to
immerse themselves in the criminal subculture of the drug world.

When juveniles caught with drugs face charges that could lead to
incarceration, they face a form of coercion that could cloud the judgment
of many mature adults, let alone most teen-agers. Undercover work can lead
to adrenaline flows and seem almost glamorous. However "streetwise" they
might be, teen-agers could find themselves pulled into ever more dangerous
activities.

Assemblyman Baugh is not ready to urge a full-scale revision of the laws
against drugs, as some of us are, in part because the nature of the laws
requires police to stretch rules about searches of private places and rely
on informers But he does say that "we shouldn't be asking teen-agers to
compensate for our failure to prosecute the war on drugs successfully."
Whether that means setting the minimum age for undercover informants
(except in cigarette or alcohol "sting") at 18 or 21 is something he would
be willing to see worked out through legislative give-and-take. His main
concern is that law enforcement agencies and district attorney's offices in
California not be in the business of putting juveniles into potentially
dangerous undercover situations.

There are arguments on the other side - some say using juveniles is the
only way to check drug selling in or near schools - but they fade when
measured against that priority. Scott Baugh's bill should be ready for
hearings and the legislative process by the end of this week. We'll reserve
some judgment until we've seen the final product, but unless it has some
unexpected fatal flaw, it deserves support and swift enactment.