Despite get-tough laws on juvenile crime in many jurisdictions, the vast majority of teen-age criminals still get no punishment or supervision either in the adult or juvenile system, according to criminal expert John J. DiIuilo Jr. Moreover, prosecutors and probation officers still are fighting uphill battles against undue legal burdens.

DiIulio also contends that even long prison terms -- while cutting crime rates -- do not deter the worst young thugs.

• Although New York State has the reputation of having the nation's toughest crime laws and New York City has long allowed juveniles to be prosecuted in adult courts, no juvenile offender in the city in all of the 1990s has ever been tried in an adult court, according to the city's chief juvenile prosecutor.

• Nationwide, in the early 1990s, only 1.4 percent of all juvenile delinquency cases were transferred to a criminal court.

• Between 1989 and 1993, the number of juvenile cases nationwide that were handled through probation increased 21 percent -- including a 45 percent increase in the number of cases involving a "person offense," such as homicide, rape, robbery and assault.

• Despite New York City's tough juvenile crime laws, about two-thirds of all juveniles who are arrested get off with only a warning in the police station -- a situation common throughout the country.

As an example of the obstacles facing juvenile prosecutors, consider the case of the 14-year-old repeat offender in Indiana. After he was charged in 1996 with strangling a 69-year-old neighbor, robbing her and stealing her car, his lawyers fought for months after the boy had confessed to keep his case out of an adult court -- arguing that he had cried about his crimes. Although prosecutors finally won a waiver to allow him to be tried as an adult, they had to persevere though months of paperwork.

Harvard economist Steven Levitt claims that between 1978 and 1993, the juvenile justice system became less, not more, punitive relative to the adult system. He calculates that had the juvenile system increased at the rate that the adult system during that period, the juvenile violent crime rate would have risen by 74 percent rather than 107 percent.

Source: John J. DiIulio (Princeton), "Jail Alone Won't Stop Juvenile Super-Predators," Wall Street Journal, June 11, 1997.