White racists who use heavy metal music to lure youths into the foul fold. Gangs for every ethnic group - including Samoans. These were among the perils being discussed at a conference on juvenile delinquency.
Some of the issues raised at the 17th National Conference on Juvenile Justice, which closed Wednesday, give the impression that America is not a great place to raise your kids."Gangs are coming to a community near you," Ronald Stephens, director of the National School Safety Center in Encino, Calif., told the conference Tuesday. His center is a project of the U.S. Justice Department and Pepperdine University.
The number of gangs are growing, Stephens said, with total membership exceeding 100,000 in the nation's three largest cities: Los Angeles has 800 gangs, Chicago 120 and New York 50. The average age of a gang member is 23.
There's a gang for everyone: both sexes, many ages and every ethnic group, including Samoans, Stephens said. The members are violent, enterprising and often free of remorse, he said.
"Kids are coming into gangs at an earlier age and staying in a longer time," he said. "Female activities are growing. Many are mules, carrying drugs or weapons."
At the "Gangs in School: Breaking Up is Hard to Do" seminar, a Los Angeles Police Department videotape showed five teenage girls as they fussed with their hair, put on eye makeup and giggled in front of a bedroom mirror.
Then they traveled to a grassy field - where the girls began pummeling one of their gangster sisters in an initiation ceremony.
A New Jersey prosecutor said that skinheads, white supremacists and neo-Nazis are recruiting young members at rock concerts by groups like The Klansmen, Skrewdriver, The New Storm Troopers and Indecent Exposure.
"There is a huge group of children out there learning their messages from heavy metal musicians, not from teachers, not from parents," said prosecutor Alan A. Rockoff of Middlesex County, N.J.
"Unfortunately these kids are looking for a sense of belonging . . . and the only place they may find it is in gangs or hate groups," said Ernestine Gray, a juvenile court judge in Orleans Parish, La. She said the U.S. Justice Department has documented 5,000 hate crimes directed at minorities in the past decade.
Rockoff said as New Jersey investigators explore the range of hate crimes, the common denominator is music that riles the worst instincts.
"In incident after incident, we find the evolution of the pollution. It is the lyrics that are designed to shock and create a triviality out of death, destruction," he said.
Alienated teenagers attracted to the dark symbolism of heavy metal music are sucked into a culture of intolerance, satanic images and anger, he said.
Rockoff does not advocate censorship.
"We advocate protest, boycotting by aware parents and professionals. Why allow these people to make a buck polluting the minds of our children?" Rockoff said. "And secondly, exposure. Through exposure you create stigmatization."