The Youth Crime Plague

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stomach by robbers, lives permanently in the Alamo. Thieves managed to break through solid steel sheets over his windows; 20 cases of beer were lugged out through the skylight. "I couldn't have whipped my people into doing that," says the grocer in disbelief. Increasingly, Harlem businessmen are giving up in despair, contributing to the steady spiral of decline. In Queens, N.Y., a dozen plants employing some 1,000 people threatened for a while to relocate unless action was taken against the youth gangs that continually robbed them. The kids were so sure of not being punished that they even announced to the executives when they would strike next.

Schools are blamed, often justly, for not equipping children with the most elementary skills. But the schools in many cities have turned into criminal dens where the distraught teacher spends most of the time trying to keep order. The FBI reports that last year some 70,000 teachers were assaulted in U.S. schools and the cost of vandalism reached $600 million. Every school day an estimated 200,000 New York City kids are truant. At least some are fleeing the danger in the classroom. At a state legislative hearing this month, Felix Davila, 16, testified that he stayed away from school because gangs terrorized teachers and shoved girls into bathrooms where they were sexually molested or forced to take drugs. Miguel Sanchez, 16, told the committee that a gang called the Savage Nomads runs his school. "All they do is rape people, mug people. I got out."

The Elusive Causes

It takes a diligent search through history to discover another society that has been as vulnerable to its youthful predators. During the early days of the Industrial Revolution in England, gangs of rapacious children roamed the streets, filling passers-by with dread. But the youngsters' crimes had a clear purpose: destitute, they would kill for food.

Obviously, a relationship still exists between poverty and crime. But the connection is rather tenuous. The great majority of poor kids do not commit crimes. The persistent offenders may come from a ghetto, but they often have more money than the people they rob. Some earn enough from selling drugs and mugging to buy all they want and then some. Explains a juvenile thief: "You know, they don't wanta be wearin' the same old sneakers every day. They wanta change like, you know, they wanta pair of black sneakers." After buying sneakers, gobs of junk food, flashy clothes, a car and, of course, guns, what else does a growing boy need? Nothing, maybe, except kicks. Mugging is like "playing a game," says a youth who attends a school for problem kids in Manhattan. "Kids do it for the fun of it."

One kid, 14, and another, 17, pistol-whipped a woman carrying two bags of groceries to her home in Miami. As she lapsed into a fatal coma on the sidewalk, they continued to kick her, then walked off leaving the groceries. In Washington, two teen-age boys went to the home of a 100-year-old minister and asked for some water. When he let them in, one kid tried to garrote him and then the other slit his throat; somehow he survived. During a robbery in the same city, in which three men were killed and one was seriously wounded, a 15-year-old armed with a machete flailed away, as prosecutors described it, in "wanton, aimless destruction."