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viewpoint'

opinion-

Herald A lantern i December 81

Finally, Juvenile Justice May Deal with Reality

b;' JurriM R. Ilurlry Just whert it begins to appear that the effectiveness of the legislative process is. being destroyed by partisan* quibbling and lame duck quackery, along comes a serious, well-conceived legislative package that restores- . one s faith in democracy The package of juvenile Justice bills approved unanimously last week by the Assembly is just such .a restorer of the faith. The product of two years of study and debate, this group of five bills would entirely revamp the ways in which . juveniles are hapdledhy the criminal justice system and, rhoi-e importantly, thirrevamp may just solve some of our biggest problems with juvenile crime and the consequences thereof t-* I AM DELIGHTED TO HAVIJ BEEN the sponsor of a number of bills whose central ideas were incorporated into the package we passed last week, and my hat is off to the sponsors of other'pieces of legislation which also served as foundation material for what amounts to a hew juvenile Justice code. - . . , • Juvenile-crime has become a serious and rapidly growing problem not only in New Jersey but across the rtation, and government's response to this problem has been regrettably inadequate, due primarily to outdated lawli. lawmakers of 20. 30 or 40 years ago could not — and clearly did not ' foresee that children as young as 10 and

12 would be involved in serious, violent crime by the thousands Juvenile justice laws were designed to deal with candy stealing, vandalistic pranks and runaways —

hot with murder; rape and robbery.

THUS. OUR ANTIQUATED LAWS hfive not allowed us

reader's forum , ' Time To Halt

y,

ritish Seagull 387

^Utterly Lonely

_ by Ima Byrd

The Midnight Gulf stood on the November shofe watching the.harvest moon reap a beauty from the crashing

surf

His Silhouette cast a a shadow on the darkened sand as he stood composing his poetry oh the wet, moss-covered M “night raised his small head to the heavens and cried out in the night_ 1 , "I saw them today. liord, I saw them. The aged people, the lonely,’sitting as if isoloated from the rest of mankind I saw them and only, moments from, their quiet selfimposed prisons. I heard life, movement.and song. THE UTTERLY LONELY NEVER NOTICED it but sat glued lo thgfc.chairs or lying expre^onless In their beds, looking.at the celling, perhpas remembering their lives when warmth and industry demanded.their inclusion. ”1 saw them Lord. coddleO. yet ignored, visited but fora moment, no longer able to penetrate the gr#at monstrous wall of humanity, no longer aolelo even see over it. "Their muscles and other life forces relax, sleep, atrophy Their desires and wants diminish, they remain hollow, shell shocked in a world lost in itself with no time ‘to mend loneliness. MIDNIGHT SAT ON THE JETTY for a long time, thinking of the old,'lonely people he’d observed, thinking o£ their unhappiness. * Breaking the silence with his magnificent voice he sang . the Sofiff of the Utterly Lonely Utterly Lonely, , • . • , ‘ The Faces reflect Inactivity . Sadness A break with life. No future* no joy, no love , . Only D^ath * . Waitingj as'q friend To cla'im the last measure From the tired heart, To give peace to < .A The Utterly Loneiy... * ^ NEXT WEEK: Empty Beaches

Dual Jobholding

By Jane Ann Cunningham

When the New Jersey Legislature begins deliberations of new laws, rules and regulations, they should consider the advisability of one prohibiting officials from holding

more than one elected position.

Perhaps in generations gqne by when only landowners could serverthe practice was expedient. In an era when only welF-to-do. educated men had the time to devote to duties which were not financially remunerative, it may have made sense'for one man to hold more than ope office Even in the not-too-distant past, when times were simpler and government not so complex, it may not have been particu'arly important. * ’ . # / j Today, it is different. Most elected positions require a great deal of time, energy and deliberation. An official^ holding tWo different posts cannot adequately- represent ^ his constituents, no matter how^good bis intentions may be Most also have their own occupations to follow, which means their efforts must be stretched pretty thin. There must also be times when there could txipossible conflicts of interest. | This anachronistic policy should be atxriished. The people of New Jersey deserve better representation. • Jane Ann Cunningham is the former'publisher njf The Herald. ■* / \

to deal with criminals as criminals. Juvenile thugs'have. been able to get away, literally, with murder. The burden of finding new ways to deal with these new problems has fallen on the juvenile court judges and the police, and the result has been inconsistent and highly uneven juvenile justice. Legislative attempts at correcting the problems, until now, have been piecemeal and in- , adequate; they have bqen bandaids on a broken leg. BUT TAKE A LOOK AT SOME of the'things that this new comprehensive package of bills will do: * •Replace both the county Juvenile and Dorhestic Relations and county District courts with a new Family Court as part of the State Superior Court sntem. •Establish Family Crisis Interventjdn programs in each county to help childrep and their fartilies cope with their problems before they becorpe serious criminal matters. •Enable judges to make parents more accountable for the actions of children who are declared delinquent. Judges would have the authority to order parents to take certain disciplinary steps with their wayward children. •Give law enforcement agencies the power to keep and to share with each other the criminal records of jilveniles

14 and older.

•Toughen the sentencing quidelines for young violent criminals. Currently, even murder by juvenile is punishable only, by a three-year indeferminate sentence. The new law would allow a 20-year sentence for murder and up to four years for other first-degree cripies. •Spell out clearly when a juvenile aged 14 or older can be tried as an adult for murder, robbery, drson, rape, any crime involving a weapon, or serious drug violations.

1 believe these rjf w laws will enable our criminal justice system to do two things: Get the realty violent juveniles off the streets; and teach the lesser deunquents that they are fooling with viry serious stuff. I trust the Senate and the Governor will think equally highly of these bills and get them on tho'books, quickly. James R. Hyrley (R Capc/Cumberiand) is Assembly Minority Leadtf'aryl the si?natpr-elect.

rOr Just Send Them to Moon'

• ''S' CAPK MAY cousrrv

I’uhllthrd Kvrr) Wrdnnday B» TV N<»w»*r ( orpocalWm John II. Andrus II William J. Adams

Bonnie Rrina Darrell Kopp

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.. Editor Advertising Director General Manager Publisher

• Ml S.o-J.. Co'p All ngMt '•«•«<>All popvtr nght, l n , ih, •ntlrs o' publKOlion .Soil b. lb* p.op*.), ol tb# Wowo«« Co*p Mo (io>l moy bo (•prorfuiod witfcoul p'io* wMtpn contpol. DEADLINES News & Photo* Thurs'dav Advertisings Friday - 3 p.m. Classified Advertising Friday -3 p.m. ( tT-3312 For News 6r Advertising Information | N'pMVr partktppilnK nof Ihe paMI'brr* of IV HKHAI.il AND LANTERN will V rrtponolMe or Upblr lor mUInlormallon. mUprinit tyBotfraplikal rrrwv etc In any htar TV rtllor mertra IV rljjbl le will any Ipller or artlrlr* aabmlllnd (or pabllra-

LANTERN

PabHabed Every Wrdneoday By TV Sean a % r C ~or par a Uoa

P 0 Bo* 484 ColdSpnna. N J OOTM^

by Owen Murphy Your aptly named columnist, Ima Bird, recently castigated county school board members for what she called their hypbcritical approach to the problem of drinking and drug abuse in local schools. She says that like all birds, she knows there is a drug and drinking problem among high school students, and that if administrators, teachers, and other interested persons really cared about kids, they’d establish some kind of program to counteract drug pushing before it swallow* the kids whole. \ Well, Mz Bird, I’m a teacher, and I’ve come up with what I think is the only solution to your problem; and that is to pack all the children in the country fnto the Spfice Shattle, and Ship them off to the moon. Because only on the moon, Mz Bird, will they be safe from a culture that tells them and sells them over and over again, that you cannot solve any of your personal problems without resorting to-one or another of the chemical modd-changers If there is a drug problem among our children, Mz Bird, it is because the whole country is awash in chemical mood-changers. There are 225 million of us in the United States, and, in 1977, 163 million legal prescriptions were written hy doctors for transquilizers — 57 million for Valium alone. How many of those would you guess went to children/Mz Bird? HOW MANY MOMMIES in this country-are carrying around in thdir purses right now a sma^vial of legally prescribed chemical mood-changers?.A|Aarently, quite a few of,them, Mz Bird, quite a few of tfrem. And how many Daddies and Mommies use our country’s most respected chemical mood changer, Alcohol, lo get drunk several times a week? You peek in windows, Ima. you tell me. From what I hear from the kids, an alarming number of their parents abuse themselves with alcohol on a regular basis — and have all of their adult lives. More than 3,000 people in Lower Township recently decided that there is nothing wrong with visitors tq their community getting drunk and staying drunk until 5 in the morning. How many of those 3.000 voters were high school students, Ima? And what do yop expect the children of those voters to think and do when they know that Mommy gets mellow on her little pills, and Daddy can stay in a gin mill until you birdg get up with the sun 7 Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, Mz Bird, but they’ve never failed to imitate them. THE LUCKLESS children of the present generation had the ill-fortune.to be born into our culture at a time when real love among members of a family has all but disappeared. Thirty years worth of television has produced a near-functional and emotional illiteracy in the United States. Conversation is obsolete. We communicate by bumper-stickers. T-shirts, ahd picketing signs. The average freshman in high school has seen 15,000 hours of television. He has seen jsore than 13,000 people die violent deaths, for the most nft unmourned. He has seen more than 400 commercials a week since he could toddle up to the magic screen. And a great many of those commercials, Mz Bird, have told him that he could add those missing ingredients, Love and Comraderie, to his life by srtipking this particular cigarette.

by drinking that brand of wine, by sloshing <jown pitchers full of beer in that most friendly of all conceivable places, the local tavern. Small wonder, Mz Bird, that our children think there is a pill or a drink to change every mood. And small wonder that they resort to them, with schools becoming increasingly little more than warehouses where the children are stocked until they are old enough to be released into the labor market. SO I THINK. Mz Bird, that you’ll have to ship all the children off to the moon if you want to keep them straight. Because Americans certainly aren’t ready for the only alternative solution that would get the kids "off drugs." And that would be to get the whole country off mood-changers; to stop making and marketing all the legal tranquilizers, cigarettes, and alcohol; to initiate and encourage an attitude that would make it as shameful to be caught drunk as it would be to b<» caught exposing yourself sexually. It would also mean cleaning up our food, too, Mz Bird, because, 6f course, we drug the pnimals we raise for slaughrer. Hanfef the antibiotics produced in this country go into the feedstuff of animals Penicillin and Tetrocycline are routinely used in the feed of all turkeys. 80 percent of the swine and veal, half of all the cattle,.and one-third of all the chickens. $500 million of additives fsynthetic chemicals) are added each year to the food we eat. That comes to 9 pounds per child, per year^- not to mention the enormous quantities of sugar that most of them are encouraged to be addicted to — and no one knows the long range effect of it all. But the short range effect is evident. YOU ASKED FOR a program, Mz Bi^d, so I’ll give’it 'to you point by point: 1. Turn oil every television set in the couhtry >- forever. Let families entertain themselves as they always did before 1950. 2. roroid the making and selling of chemical moodchangers, including all cigarettes, tranquilizers, and alcohol. 3 Clean up our food. People who eat wholesome food rarely feel the need for mood-changers 4. Teach children that the best way to banish a blue mood is with good music, good books, or good conversation. 5. Rpng back the small community Schools at all levels, and make them exciting places where our children can learn all the truth we can teach them. If you do all that, Mz Bird, I don’t think you’ll have a "drug problem" with the next generation of children. But we both know, don’t we, that sending them all to the moon would bfe more realistic. Americans will never willirtgly give up their Valiums and Libriums, thfir martinis and scotches, their Big Boys and Hot Fudge Tacoes, their General Hospital and Celebrity Bowling, their Beer World haunts, their collision music, vacuous magazines, joyless sex, and mindless hobbies — not for something as unimportant as their children. Joseph Heller said recently that people don’t care what happens to their kids these'days - as long as it doesn’t happen too soon. I think he’s right, Mz Bird. The proof is all around us. Open your eyes and look. . Owen Murphy is a Court House resident.