DATE: Thursday, June 5, 1997                TAG: 9706050001

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B10  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   36 lines

YOUTH AND CRIME A PROMISING PROGRAM

There are several good reasons for the continuing, gratifying decline in violent crime - partnerships between police and neighborhoods, zero-tolerance by law enforcement of disorderliness and unlawfully concealed weapons, character-building programs for preteens and teens and the middle-aging of baby boomers.

The aging trend is making a huge contribution to the downturn in criminality. And to an unmeasurable degree, so is the incarceration of more and more criminals for increasingly long periods. No nation has a greater percentage of lawbreakers, in relation to overall population, behind bars. That there are fewer crack-cocaine turf wars, because many territorial disputes have been resolved, also figures in the diminished violence.

The trick, of course, is to keep the trend going. And that will be hard as a new wave of preteens moves into the teens. But impossible? Maybe not.

More and more poor neighborhoods, including public-housing parks, fed up with being terrorized have welcomed grass-roots policing that turns law officers into friends. Ordinary people - in poor and lower-middle, middle and upper-middle income neighborhoods - work with police to keep hoods at bay.

A wire report about the nationwide 7 percent drop in violent crime in 1996 from 1995 spotlighted Charlotte, N.C.'s, ``Right Moves for Youth'' clubs - 160 of them, each directed by a policeman, a citizen and a teacher. The clubs set scholastic- and behavioral-performance objectives for youngsters and reward those who progress with trips to basketball games and amusement parks.

Sounds like a splendid program. Positive reinforcement of desirable conduct is the way to go with children, within families, in the classroom, after school. Not enough Americans know or practice that approach to child-rearing. The consequences are seen in stunted lives, horror, blood, tears.

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