There is a bipartisan consensus in Washington that youth crime, particularly violent youth crime, is a real problem that threatens to grow over the next decade. This consensus makes it highly likely that President Clinton will sign some version of a new federal juvenile crime bill this year – unusual only because Congress traditionally has passed crime legislation in even-numbered (read: election) years. Congress expects to do at the federal level what many states have already done: toughen the treatment of young criminals, who have regarded the juvenile justice system as a joke for at least the last decade.
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