EVERY DAY IT seems the media carry shocking stories about juveniles who commit crimes. Consider these recent cases:

• In 1993 six Houston boys, ages fourteen to eighteen, were charged with raping and killing two girls, ages fourteen and sixteen, and leaving their nude bodies in a wooded area. To make sure the girls were dead, the killers strangled them and stood on their necks, a Houston police spokesperson said.
• In Chicago in 1994 two boys dropped a five-year-old boy from a fourteenth-floor window because the boy refused to steal candy for them.
• In 1995 a fourteen-year-old San Diego boy killed a twenty-year-old pizza delivery driver while attempting to rob him.
• In June 1997 a sixteen-year-old Minnesota boy shot and killed an eighteen-year-old rather than pay him two hundred dollars for a marijuana debt.

Extensive media coverage of crimes such as these has increased the nation's concern...