This is the second of three editorials looking at the year behind us for clues about what's to come.
The funerals were wrenching enough: A 15-year-old gunned down trying to protect his mother during a restaurant robbery. A 19-year-old dead after being stripped, beaten and robbed in a mob attack. A 14-year-old middle school student kicked and stomped to death in another mob beating. And another 14-year-old fatally shot playing cops and robbers.
More wrenching, still: The people accused of the violence are teenagers, most too young to drive legally, and one barely old enough for a PG movie.
Taken together, these crimes, all committed in 2007 in South Hampton Roads, are both a frightening measure of how youth violence has changed and escalated and a signal that our response must change, as well.
As recently as four years ago, national statistics showed youth violence on the decline. For teens 12 to 14, the violent crime rate fell by about 59 percent between 1993 and 2003, according to the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Anecdotal evidence shows the level of violence is increasing, and the age of the criminals is decreasing. Middle school-age children are carrying guns. The absence of adult supervision and the prevalence of drugs and guns have contributed, experts say.
In Norfolk, youths ages 13, 15 and 18 were charged with shooting Dominic Young to death last month while trying to rob a Church Street restaurant. An attack in East Ocean View in July on three young men resulted in murder charges against seven people, including three 15-year-old girls; a girl and boy, both 17; and a 19-year-old man. And in February, four males between 16 and 18 were said to be responsible for kicking and stomping to death Norview Middle School student Dennis R. Johnson on Nevada Avenue.
Nearly two years ago, after several fatal shootings involving teenagers, Suffolk began a taxpayer-financed youth initiative to stem the violence. The effort rightly focused on prevention - keeping kids in school, giving them safe places to go afterward and creating job training programs.
Suffolk officials say they've seen no serious gang-related crimes in recent months, and the number of juvenile cases is down. But they caution it's too soon to know whether the youth initiative is responsible.
Its philosophy is sound, however, and is contained in federal legislation sponsored by U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, a Newport News Democrat. His bill would strengthen the ability of communities to intervene in the lives of youths as soon as they show signs of trouble.
Pair them with responsible adults who will guide and spend time with them. Make sure they're in school. Provide mental health evaluations and counseling if they need it. Teach them about drug abuse, how to manage anger, how to correct course when they make mistakes. If they vandalize property, for example, require them to clean it up.
The philosophy correctly reduces the nation's emphasis on youth prisons, which have not proven deterrents to crime. The goal is to find programs that work, that reduce the number of kids getting in trouble. We must catch and rehabilitate those who veer toward gangs or crime before they get too far.
As 2008 dawns, and more than a dozen teenagers in South Hampton Roads are facing murder trials, we must change our response to youth violence. To prevent violence, we must give our schools and communities the tools to identify and help the children who disrupt class, fight and cause trouble at home - before they drop out of school.
When society gives up on its children, when it sees prisons as the answer to crime, rather than as a means for intensive rehabilitation, society pays. Those children learn values from criminals. They learn to respond to anger with violence.
Rather than concentrating on immediate solutions to threats to public safety, we must look for long-term solutions to the underlying problems. We can help kids now or become their victims later.
Tomorrow: "Northern Virginia rises to dominance"