I sort of mentioned in my account what I believed should be done about youth crime.

There need to be programs in place that will turn children away from patterns of behavior and thought that lead them into criminal acts. There need to be moralizing, skill-teaching, maturity developing institutions to help raise kids where their parents, teachers, and environment fail to do so.

Whenever there is a pattern of deviant and criminal behavior (beyond the typical play, curiosity, and mischievousness inherent in children) there needs to be state-funded centers of rehabilitation and learning.

Children should not be treated like criminals. I think the juvenile justice system is broken and provenly useless. We need to take a caring, but firm approach to child welfare and development.

I suggest state-funded independently operated boarding schools for troubled youth. Where possible, the students, teachers, parents, relatives, and administrators will all work together to work through each individual child's problems and get them on the proper track.

The students should live in individual rooms and shouldn't be permitted to congregate without strict supervision of adults. A lot of problem children gathering together would only produce more advanced delinquency.

Each room should come with basic amenities for play and education (no television unless it provides only educational programming). A book program should be developed to allow the children to receive any book they want, within reason.

A computer should be provided to each of the students to be used individually, though it should be properly regulated to keep them from accessing unsavory sites. Otherwise, they are free to roam and explore the World Wide Web.

The better they do in their studies and the better their behavior, the meeting of the goals set by the students and adults together will award them more and more amenities. They need to be shown that they will be rewarded for doing good things, to know that there is prosperity in the path of lawful activity and maturity.

Care will be taken to allow the students religious, political, artistic, and ideological freedom; they need to be able to explore themselves and various concepts and thoughts. There will be no censorship beyond what is absolutely necessary. (In other words, they can write freely about how awesome Republican politics is but they cannot write about wanting to bomb MSNBC headquarters without intervention.) They can go to political websites, religious websites, but not pornographic or websites advocating violence or criminal activity.

Guided freedom is what should be the aim of these institutions; the better behaved the student is the more freedom they will be granted. This isn't going to be one of those rigid boarding schools populated by bully principles or zealous nuns with yard sticks.

do like in the Gridiron Gang. start a football team (or teams in general).

teaches discipline and working together. and it's fun.

Non-violent youth crime is a social problem, not a legal or judicial problem. Address the illness, not the symptom.

Don't blame the kids; blame the parents. Help the kids; punish the parents. Help the teachers; punish the schools.

Having been a foster parent and seeing all the bureaucracy of the system, failure of the system, cost of the programs, wasted $$, terrible parents given chance after chance while failing over and over, and witnessing the horrible effects this has on children It is a tough uphill battle we face. We are now dealing with yesterdays adults that are the product of the last generation's problems with youth crime. The parents are drug addicts, child abusers/molesters, alcoholics, no jobs or futures and the kids are just fending for themselves and growing up without a parent. They sleep in front of the TV with mom passed out on the couch, or worse left with Mom's bad boyfriend alone while she's out on the town. It's heartbreaking. Many seem to become sociopaths, they have no feelings and make no attachments due to neglect. Any attention, even bad is better than none. So this inevitably leads to crime and gang activity, where they at least can get some feeling of belonging and acceptance. Their behavior soon becomes very erratic, crazy and desperate. They get into all sorts of trouble and their parents are no where to be found, probably don't have a clue where and what they are doing.

These kids need attention in the form of strict discipline. They are crying out for somebody to care enough to limit their behavior, watch them and discipline them. Good foster homes work wonders, but they are in short supply. Good social workers are a valuable asset. The problem children need somebody on their side who can give them tough love if need be, lot of tough love.

The Gridiron Gang was a GREAT movie, I loved it

How about a good caining like they do in Asia?

We should go back to the 10th Amendment and leave it up to the States.

The States and local levels are better able to handle such a task however, not take away any Constitutional rights. We oppress certain groups because we don't treat them as equals and throw them in jail without looking at the reasons why we have youth crimes.

The drug war is a great example. We have a federal ban on drugs and severe penalties for even a small amount of drugs and this directly affects the youth crime. I am opposed to the use of drugs however; the use of drugs should be left up to the families, friends and treatment not jail-time.

Youth crime will always be around but we must look at the sources of youth crime. Questions that should be asked: Where are the parents? What are the schools possibly going to do? Are there any programs at the local towns?

A ten-year sentence is not the answer though.