E-Mail This Article to a Friend Young and dangerous Foster care, teen parenting, high dropout rates, and failures in the juvenile-justice system are turning Boston’s streets into a playground of mindless violence BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN AND ADAM REILLY

NOT QUITE EIGHT months into the year, the number of murder victims in Boston topped 2003’s total, and now threatens to be the highest since 1995. As if that weren’t disturbing enough, the face of violence is changing, too: well more than half the city’s victims this year are under 25, a higher percentage than at any time over the past 10 years. And juveniles (those under 18), who essentially vanished from the murder picture a decade ago, are falling prey to street violence in increasing numbers all over again. In 2003, six adolescent boys were killed in the city, and at least four were arrested for committing murder — out of 41 total homicides. Five more victims under age 18 have fallen already this year, and the 10 suspects arrested so far in 2004 include a 16-year-old, two 18-year-olds, and three more people under 25. At least two dozen other adolescents have been shot non-fatally since the start of 2003, and many more stabbed. Arrests of youngsters for violent crimes surged last year, and are keeping pace in 2004.

According to close observers, today’s youth violence is more diffuse and random than it was in the 1980s and early ’90s. Back then, 60 percent of under-age-25 homicides were gang-driven; they involved less than one percent of the city’s youth and were concentrated in three neighborhoods, according to the Boston Gun Project. They were vicious, but they were purposeful — serving the interests of an organization’s share of the city’s drug trade.

Today, according to one veteran Boston police officer who tracks youth activity, "the turf-based gangs have been replaced by 5500 [violent] kids moving through the city of Boston." They carry machetes in East Boston, bats in South Boston, knives in Mattapan, and guns almost everywhere. They have no interest in education, a lousy home life, and no job prospects.

"A lot of disputes now are over really stupid stuff," says the officer, who asked to remain anonymous since he did not have permission to speak for the department.

Rachel Sandler, a social worker who gives tennis lessons in Malcolm X Park through the social-services group Tenacity, agrees. "Yesterday, a group of kids — they couldn’t have been more than 13 — they got mad about something down at the pool and started yelling and walking through the park," she says. "One of them had a bat. Nobody carrying a bat is up to any good unless they’re on the baseball field."

Take a look at the April 8 death of Terrell Hodge, 15, stabbed by 18-year-old Darnell Delaney. While we don’t know yet exactly what happened that morning (Delaney’s lawyer says his client was defending himself), we know a few things about these two young men. Hodge was still in seventh grade and had just been suspended. Delaney, was in the Compass School for high-risk teens in Jamaica Plain. Hodge was carrying a hammer and Delaney was carrying a knife when they got into a fight at a bus stop. Trouble waiting to happen.

At a community meeting hosted by the Greater Four Corners Action Coalition in July, police officers revealed the top-five reasons Boston’s youngsters give for carrying a gun. Gang membership, robbery, and turf defense were not on the list. Instead they cited power, protection, the need to end quarrels that might otherwise linger, the possibility of being caught unarmed by an "enemy," and the belief that "doing time is no big deal."

And they use those guns outside, in front of crowds, and with apparent disregard for whom they hit or who witnesses it. In the past few weeks alone, a youth basketball team watched its 23-year-old coach, William Gaines, gunned down; 11-year-old Jenry Gonzalez took a stray bullet during football tryouts; and 15-year-old Jaime Owens was grazed by a bullet while walking through a playground.

A REPORT released in June by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, in Maryland, documents a national increase in "disconnected youths," or young adults who are not working or attending school and do not have a high-school diploma. In the always-difficult transition from adolescence to adulthood, the report says, these young people have had no help, and are facing failure. And, according to the report, their numbers have grown nationally by almost 20 percent just since 2000.

"When you have a public-health issue — say, cancer — there are risk indicators, things that people do that if they continue, you know will lead to cancer," says Chris Byner, program director at the Tobin Community Center, in Mission Hill. "There are risk indicators of violence."

When it comes to youth violence, the Casey report claims that the risk factors are relatively easy to identify. Most at-risk teens are, according to the study, in foster care, in the juvenile-justice system, have children, or have dropped out of high school. Theoretically, these people are easily identifiable by state and local officials, who could target resources and programs to help them. Unfortunately, the report says, "these systems have routinely and consistently failed them in their young lives."

We don’t know how many of Boston’s murderers have these characteristics — neither the Boston Police Department (BPD) nor the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office tracks such information, even for those they catch. But many people who work with the city’s teens and adults cite the same factors, at least anecdotally.