How Might Legislators Get Beyond Mopping Up Messes?

Thu., July 9, 1998

Doug Floyd Interactive Editor

The state supplied the money and the caseload, so Spokane County commissioners agreed this week to expand their Juvenile Court.

The $500,000-a-year expenditure - which funds a third courtroom, a second court commissioner and several other personnel positions - is a response to ballooning numbers of truancy and runaway reports.

If the state hadn’t agreed to pick up the tab, it’s unlikely the county would have moved ahead with the enlargement plans - at least this soon. Of course, if the state hadn’t enacted the so-called Becca Bill three years ago, the caseload wouldn’t have exploded, either.

In other words, without the Legislature’s action, young people who are skipping school and running away from home would be able to do so without interference from the justice system.

So, if legislative action can ignite such a change (runaway and truancy reports have quadrupled since the Becca Bill took effect), what would happen if they focused as much of their attention on preventing dysfunctional behavior in the first place as they have on cleaning up the damage later?

It’s not that there aren’t plenty of models for pointing kids away from trouble. The problem tends to be that you can add up the youngsters who cut class, flee home or commit crimes. Numbers are measurable and measurements sell legislative proposals.

Kids who might have gotten in trouble for defying social convention, but didn’t, thanks to constructive intervention in their lives, are harder to identify. That means lawmakers have to justify their decisions with convictions rather than data.

What experiences have readers had with strategies for keeping kids out of trouble - and ultimately, for sparing the state or county the expense of so many new courts and prosecutors?

Flaming radicals

Reminiscent of a raid at Washington State University several years ago, animal-rights activists claim responsibility for torching two federal animal research laboratories in Olympia.

Interestingly, part of the ruined research was seeking a nonlethal way to discourage wildlife from destroying timber seedlings.

What if a tree-rights group took similar action to protect small trees from hungry deer?

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