Youths more likely to turn to violence when fathers absent

"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport." So says Shakespeare's desperate and deceived Gloucester in "King Lear." In the play, Gloucester is desperate because of the vicious blinding inflicted upon him. And he wrongly thinks the source of the wound is his loyal son, Edgar.

Modern life routinely resembles the tragic dimensions of Elizabethan drama. In the District of Columbia, that drama has more than its share of wanton boys. Over the past few months the city has been shocked by two barbaric killings that district police say were committed by young men who escaped from juvenile detention facilities. The cases are particularly gut-wrenching. One concerns a 14-year-old boy who twice fled juvenile homes run by the district's Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. He is accused of being the driver of a minivan who, along with two passengers, sprayed gunfire that killed five people and wounded five more. Just two weeks later, three 18-year-olds previously under the agency's supervision were charged with murder in the robbery and shooting of a district middle-school principal in his home in suburban Silver Spring, Md. Police on May 18 arrested a fourth person, 19. He became at least the eighth ward of the district's juvenile justice system to be charged with murder this year.

The 14-year-old had his first run-in with juvenile courts when he was 9.

One of the accused in the slaying of principal Brian Betts was 11 during his first stay in juvenile lockup on a child sex charge. Detention in the District's porous juvenile justice system — an estimated 150 youths are missing from group facilities or home detention — is among few options available under the vagaries of the city's rehabilitation-oriented law. The recent cases have spurred calls for reform. Chances are district officials will form a new juvenile justice commission. There will be demands for better databases, more funding for secure facilities and serious prison sentences for the most violent young offenders.

One member of the Council of the District of Columbia spoke of the need for "educational and vocational opportunities" and "intensive mentoring." Apparently, however, only multiple killings get press attention nowadays.