Killer Kids, Bad Law: Tales of the Juvenile Court System

The head of New York City's Juvenile Prosecution Unit, Reinharz has scant sympathy for the ideology of what he terms social engineers. While they emphasize remediation of the societal and familial dysfunctions that they believe give rise to young criminals, he focuses on the actions of those youths, some of them murderous sociopaths by the age of 13, for he sees his job as protecting the public from them. In his chilling catalogue of some of the vicious attacks by such teens, he points out that the juvenile justice system, set up years ago to rehabilitate kids arrested for drinking beer or stealing hubcaps, is badly equipped to deal with ""stone-cold killers."" He allows that some of the offenders could be socialized, but at enormous costs, and he believes that the public's unwillingness to pay is shortsighted. For Reinharz, incarceration is the only practical solution. The second half of his survey, which concerns the laws of New York State, is less effective because it is too technical for general readers. Still, it is yet another call to America to pay heed to its juvenile ""superpredators,"" whom Reinharz sees as on the increase. (Nov.)