First, a personal note to the reader. Writing this monthly column in The West Virginia Lawyer for the last 11 months has been one of the most meaningful opportunities in my career.

Why have I so valued this opportunity? Because the readers of this magazine are some of the most powerful, intelligent, concerned, and active citizens in our state. I value highly the opportunity to address you about issues that are important to me, and I thank you for your patience and audience as I have done so.

One of the most important issues to me -- as a citizen, as a parent (and now a grandparent -- we welcomed our first grandchild in August, Hayden Chase Starcher!), and as a lawyer, judge, and justice -- is the need to improve how our society and our criminal justice system addresses the problems of child and youth violence, crime, and delinquency.

I want to begin my necessarily brief remarks on this complex subject with the one truism about this issue upon which every analyst and commentator -- right or left, liberal or conservative -- agrees: there is a huge disconnect between our knowledge and our practice.

Bluntly, our politicians and policy makers are not making decisions and allotting priorities based on what we know about how to most effectively prevent and reduce crime, violence, and delinquency among children and young people. Instead, they are adopting "quick fix" policies that "look good" in the short run, but are relatively wasteful and ineffective in the long run.

I will use my limited space to look at two aspects of this disconnect: school violence, and delinquency prevention.

In West Virginia, our aging demographics have been accompanied by a decline in the number of school incidents reported involving weapons (and the definition has been stretched in some instances) -- from 292 in the 1994-95 school year to 187 last year. Incidents involving guns dropped from 60 to 21. Nationally, there has also been a real drop in juvenile crime among minority youth in our urban centers. At the same time we are seeing some increase in rural and suburban youth -- even occasional gangs. And there have been some horrible, sensational incidents, like Columbine.

Dr. James A. Fox, Dean of the College of Criminal Justice of Northeastern University in Boston, is considered by many as the nation's leading expert on youth killing. He was the keynote speaker at a recent School and Community Safety Forum hosted by West Virginia University by Senator Robert C. Byrd; I had the benefit of attending that forum. On the subject of school violence, Dr. Fox expressed the concern that we will simplistically go for "quick fix" ideas to react to sensational incidents -- and that these efforts will not work -- or even worse, will cause more problems than they solve. Dr. Fox says that effective methods of addressing school violence will take time, but they are out there.

Here is Dr. Fox's list of easy, quick fix, and largely ineffective ideas:

-- Metal detectors: Hardly foolproof. Kids who want to bring in a weapon will find a way. The Jonesboro incident came from the school yard. How about on a bus? Even worse, detectors may lull students, parents and teachers, into a false sense of security.

-- Mesh knapsacks: Fox says this is silly. Some schools have even gone to no knapsacks with two sets of books, one for school and one for home.

-- More police in school halls: Fox fears that this gives schools the aura of an armed camp, and increases student anxiety. Columbine had an armed officer.

-- Locked school doors: Some schools have locked all but one entrance/exit; but what happens if some student starts shooting and his victim cannot escape because a door is locked?

-- Observe telltale warning signs in students and act assertively: A good idea, but it usually comes as hindsight. We know that we have always had "misfits" in our schools, and that most never harm anyone. Targeting "misfits" may be counter-productive.

-- "Zero tolerance" for threats and weapons: Applied rigidly, these policies have resulted in some pretty silly results. Suspension of elementary school girls in Georgia for making a list of people they wanted to hurt -- Spice Girls, Barney and the Purple Dinosaur. Suspension of a Utah girl who brought a paring knife to peel an apple. Suspension of a Maryland second grader who made a construction paper gun.

-- School uniforms: Fox says there may be some good short-term effect, but the research suggests that over the long haul, they do not work to make a "one size fits all" student. Kids simply devise other ways to identify cliques and tastes -- hair styles, tattoos, etc.

Then Dr. Fox told the conference what the research shows would be effective strategies for reducing school violence -- but he warns that they are difficult, and are not a quick fix:

-- Increase after school programs: Analysis of the time of youth crimes shows that the far greatest percentage of youth crime is committed by unsupervised youth after school before 7:00 p.m. After-school programs directly reduce delinquency and violence, by filling the idle time of our most vulnerable youngsters at their most vulnerable hours.

-- Bring the "frills" back into our schools: In the wake of taxpayer revolts, many schools have dropped extra-curricular activities such as band, choral groups, computer clubs, and on and on.

-- Decrease the size of schools and classes: Fox believes that in schools of over a thousand students, youth fail to have a sense of community. He believes that the maximum school size for junior highs should be about 500. This may cost more, but we will have less problems in the schools.

-- Increase school staff: For troubled youth in troubling times, we need more counselors with smaller caseloads.

-- Teach conflict resolution early: High school is too late to develop strategies for dealing with conflict. Kids do not get these skills at home in many cases -- rich and poor.

-- Provide alternative programs for youth expelled for having weapons: Even with a decline in weapons incidents, still many youth are carrying weapons to school. Do not simply expel these students to roam the streets.

I was honored to attend Senator Byrd's School Violence meetings, and to hear these wise words, words that were echoed by every professional there. Here is the knowledge -- but is there a disconnect with what will be put in place? Do mesh backpacks give people a "feeling" that they are safer? Certainly they are a lot easier path to getting that "feeling" than dealing with troubled children in a meaningful way!

Now, let me turn to the deeper issue of reducing youth delinquency and crime. Here I can only touch on this vast subject. My source for the following is an excellent new book by Elliott Currie, called Crime and Punishment in America (Owl Books, Henry Holt and Company). Currie is a distinguished author and teacher on criminal justice matters, now teaching in the Legal Studies Program at the University of California.

Currie discusses a number of studies that have carefully measured the effect of various programs and interventions in the lives of families and children, in terms of whether the programs can reduce criminal and delinquent behavior. In all of these studies, there were also carefully studied control groups, and the efficacy of the intervention/prevention programs was shown in contrast to the control groups. The results are consistent and should give us all great grounds for hope -- if only we would bridge the gap between what we know and what we do.

In the Elmira, New York, Prenatal-Early Infancy Program, registered nurses visited young unmarried mothers on a weekly basis for 2 years, when their children were infants. Child abuse and neglect was dramatically reduced during the visit period. But more importantly, 15 years after the visits, child abuse, arrest, and substance abuse rates were substantially reduced in the group that had received the home visiting. These results were replicated in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins, and in Hawaii, through the state's Healthy Start Program.

Another early-childhood home visit/pre-school program for poor children was carried out in Ypsilanti, Michigan, for 2 years. Two groups of high-risk children were followed for 27 years, and the results were remarkable -- children who had received a program of early supportive attention and intervention were only "one-fifth as likely as the carefully matched control group to have become chronic criminal offenders . . . and one-fourth as likely to have been arrested for drug-related crimes." These results were replicated in studies at Yale and at Syracuse University.

Of course, these programs cost money. But Stanford University has shown just 2 years ago that a dollar invested in drug treatment and youth crime prevention will save five dollars in incarceration and corrections costs.

In Monongalia County, 20 years ago, we began a program of dealing with youth delinquency that emphasized diversion from traditional judicial determinations, and supportive services. We set up an Alternative Learning Center and a Youth Services Center. Some people said we were "soft" on delinquents -- unless, of course, it was their child who was in trouble. Twenty years later, I can point to child after child, now productive adult citizens, who were diverted from delinquent careers, and maybe much worse, by our policy of support, tolerance, and patience. Yes, we had some failures, but we had hundreds of successes. I am proud that our program is ongoing today, and indeed, is rooted in our community.

Millions of children in the United States, especially children from low-income families, are growing up without basic supportive services that all children, poor and rich -- in Hong Kong, Denmark, France, Japan, Canada, and other industrialized countries -- are receiving. Our nation is paying a terrible price in youth crime and delinquency.