CURFEW PUSH IS ADMISSION OF OUR FAILURE.

Byline: Rita Walters 

A curfew prohibiting youth to be on Los Angeles City streets after 10 p.m. is an easy sell to a public which feels besieged by crime. Knowing that the issue is far too complicated for quick and easy resolution, the City Council nevertheless feel pressured to act.

However, as the current debate over enforcement of the ``three strikes, you're out'' measure demonstrates, the urgency behind emotion-driven solutions must, sooner or later, confront the folly of feel-good legislation.

We cannot continue to pursue solutions that are nothing more than a reshuffling of the problem.

People of color, in particular, must beware our own tendency to support law-and-order legislation that may simply legitimize the rope-and-brand kind of justice that we have fought against so strenuously in the past.

Unless it can be carefully monitored, the teen curfew proposal can easily become another device to further marginalize people of color, and to increase the number of youngsters who enter adulthood crippled by a police record.

To no small extent, the push for a teen-age curfews are an admission of our failure.

Failure of parents to exercise sufficient guidance and discipline to steer their children clear of dangerous activity, and instill standards of obedience to parental control.

It's also the failure of those institutions second only to the family in terms of their opportunity to teach and influence children in their formative years - our schools and religious institutions.

It's the failure of elected officials and government to recognize the changed nature of our society, and the explosive growth of its youthful segment, and provide appropriate leadership.

And, finally, it's our collective failure to place a premium on these young lives and commit ourselves and our resources to their care and nurture.

The problem with the curfew is not that it won't work, but that it may work against us - that by turning to teams of police to do what families, institutions and communities have failed to do, we will compound our errors and pay the price later for false security now.

Are some of our youth a problem? Absolutely.Should we sit idly by while teen-agers loiter, roam and engage in threatening damaging and often violent behavior? Absolutely not.

The question is not whether we should act in the face of increasingly disturbing teen-age behavior. Most people agree that the need for solutions is immediate and critical.

Unchecked teen-age delinquency not only threatens the larger citizenry, but imperils the safety of the teen-agers themselves.

But will a curfew prove to be an effective deterrent against juvenile delinquency?

Of primary concern to community leaders and civil rights activists is the potential for targeting groups of youth for curfew ``arrests'' based on presumptions based on ethnicity, dress or other selective criteria.

As initially introduced on a pilot basis, the teen curfew immediately raised the ire of parents and other community activists for its appearance of targeting African-American and Latino youth.

At my urging, the City Council remedied that by a majority of vote, and the curfew will go into effect throughout the city at the same time.

But that initial handling of the proposed curfew should remind us that the problem isn't always the law itself but, rather, how those in authority choose to implement and enforce it.

We may wish it were otherwise, but this is not the time to relax our vigilance. And our youth are not the ones who should be made the target of emotional appeals to ``take back our streets.''

As evidenced by the millions of dollars paid out each year to settle abuse cases involving law enforcement in the city and county of Los Angeles, applications of the law cannot, unfortunately, be assumed fair and unbiased in all cases.

I am concerned that young people, due to their age and lack of maturity, may be even more vulnerable to abuses of their constitutional liberties.

We can't sugar-coat the reality of youthful crime; it is increasing at an explosive rate. But we should examine our tendency to treat youthful offenders with the same measures which have failed to deter crime at the hands of adults.

Nor does the teen-age curfew law recognize a simple reality for far too many of our young people: Without the streets they have nowhere to go, no place to be.

In households forced by poverty to double up - and even triple up - in housing much too small for their needs, young people have no moments of privacy, no place to be alone and seek out, in lieu of the anonymity of the streets.

In my own South Central district, there is a dearth of entertainment options for young people - one movie theater near USC, no skating rinks, soccer fields or bowling alleys. Dependence on public transportation makes it virtually impossible for one of my teen-age constituents to have an evening movie date and be home before 10 p.m.

A few days ago, despite my reservations, I voted to enact the curfew. But, still I worry that we may have embraced a strategy that will result in making our children outcasts, unwelcome by a society that has relinquished responsibility for their care.

As the state legislature ponders 47 bills aimed at punishing juvenile offenders, it may seem trite to raise the issue of prevention as a less costly alternative.

Nevertheless, as reported by the Rand think tank, early intervention - taking care of our children before they become lawbreakers - would reduce crime by the same level at one-fifth the cost spent on bringing them into the juvenile justice system.

No, we can't afford to ignore the accelerating rise in juvenile crime, but neither can we redeem the lives of our children by setting them up for an early offense.

MEMO: Los Angeles City Council member Rita Walters represents the 9th District

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Photo: L.A. curfew: An attempt to curb teen-age delinquency .

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