JUVENILE CRIME CRACKDOWN UNWARRANTED, OFFICIAL SAYS

Kanawha County's chief public defender says the behavior of West Virginia's
children is getting better, not worse.

He thinks legislators should think twice before making juvenile laws and
penalties tougher.

"It's something that happens at the start of most every legislative
session," George Castelle said. "People present the notion that there is
some kind of an impending crisis with crime, especially juvenile crime, and
say we need to crack down before it spirals out of control. In this case,
the facts just don't support that argument."

The bulwark of Castelle's position is the dramatic decrease in juveniles
charged with murder in recent years. Statistical reports from the state
Department of Public Safety show that since the peak of 17 juveniles
arrested for murder in 1995, the numbers fell to one or two arrests each
year since 1998.

"The crime rate among juveniles is improving, and that reflects the fact
that people in juvenile justice and social services are doing their jobs
well," Castelle said. "They deserve credit."

But from the other side of the courtroom, prosecutors say that while
certain categories may be showing improvement, there is a "fundamental
problem."

"You have kids committing more adult-type offenses, and at a younger age,"
said Bill Charnock, head of the state's Prosecuting Attorney's Institute.
"That's a problem in its own right, but then you compound that with the
fact that the laws that we have to deal with children date back to when we
were kids and the biggest concern was how to deal with somebody putting
cherry bombs in mailboxes or taking a ball bat to a lamppost."

Prosecutors say a new approach is needed.

Castelle points to numbers from the Division of Criminal Justice Services
that show arrests for the most serious kinds of juvenile crime have been
steadily decreasing since the late 1980s. The crimes, including murder,
rape, robbery, assault, breaking and entering and auto theft, have been
gradually diminishing since their peak.

Over the same period, there was a steady increase in the lesser category of
crimes -- property offenses, runaway, fraud, arson, drug and alcohol
violations and weapons offenses. Much of the increase over the 1990s can be
attributed to skyrocketing arrests for marijuana offenses. Between 1989 and
1998, marijuana-related arrests of juvenile offenders increased by 288 percent.

While arrests for driving under the influence and cocaine-related charges
saw modest increases over the same period, 1,689 children were arrested for
marijuana possession and 232 were charged with sale or production of the drug.

Castelle suggests that when the interstate system in the state was
completed in the late 1980s, it brought in more out-of-state drug
traffickers and caused the spike in serious juvenile crime.

He says that period has ended and the numbers have stabilized.

From Charnock's perspective, though, the problems of juvenile crime are
still many.

"It's a problem we can all see in our own communities," Charnock said. "And
I think people are fed up with the current state of affairs. I don't think
most folks, especially victims, would tell you that the situation is improving."