As I recounted in The New York Times in 2001, while I regretted juxtaposing "super-predators" to "delinquents," the frightening forecasts were predicated on leading experts’ predictions that, following a possible half-decade lull, youth violence would rise in 2000 and surge around 2006. I still have my "Operation 2006" t-shirt from one national anti-violence effort I helped launch in 1996. In fact, I was so concerned by the impending youth violence spiral that I "got religion": In the "super-predators" essay, I diagnosed the problem’s root cause as "moral poverty," defined as "the poverty of being without parents and other authorities" who love and support you and being surrounded by too many "deviant, delinquent, and criminal" adults. Long prison terms would not deter impulsive teenage toughs; indeed, locking them up alongside adult felons would only make matters worse. My prescription was to pour more human and financial resources, both public and private, into urban churches with youth outreach ministries and faith-based crime prevention programs. Thereafter, from 1996 through 2000, in numerous opinion-editorials, research reports, academic articles, and congressional testimonies, I emphasized that "super-preachers" were the key to saving "super-predators," that we needed to "build churches, not jails," and that "monitoring, mentoring, and ministering" were the "3Ms of crime prevention."

Thank God, rather than rising relentlessly, in the late 1990s juvenile violent crime rates began receding to pre-1985 levels. Did "super-preachers" and expanded faith-based crime prevention, mentoring, and related community-based programs have anything to do with that outcome? In certain cities, most notably Boston, I think they probably did, but I cannot prove it. Moreover, even though the worst-case juvenile violence scenarios mercifully did not come to pass, serious crime by and against youth remains a serious national problem. As Barack Obama preached before a church congregation in Chicago on July 15, 2007, "From South Central to Newark, New Jersey, there’s an epidemic of violence that’s sickening the soul of this nation. The violence is unacceptable and it’s got to stop."

A 2009 report by the Department of Justice suggests that his words about an "epidemic of violence" were not only morally prophetic but also empirically correct. Issued last October, it reported that more than 60 percent of all American children were exposed to violence, either as victims or as witnesses, in the previous 12 months. About half of all youth were assaulted at least once. Nearly one-quarter were victims of robbery, vandalism, or theft. Around 6 percent were raped or sexually assaulted.

On the same day that these discomforting data were released, Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan appeared together in Chicago "to call for a national conversation on values to address youth violence in the wake of the fatal beating of a Chicago high-school student." "These numbers are astonishing, and they are unacceptable," Holder said. "We simply cannot stand for an epidemic of violence that robs our youth of their childhood and perpetuates a cycle in which today’s victims become tomorrow’s criminals."

Even as overall juvenile crime rates (including school violence statistics) continue to trend down, little-publicized statistics from other government-sponsored studies reinforce what the President and the Attorney General each have stated regarding the "epidemic of violence." Between 2004 and 2008, the juvenile arrest rate for murder rose by 18.9 percent, and the juvenile arrest rate for robbery rose by 45.8 percent. Today, America is home to an estimated 27,000 street gangs, the highest estimate since 1998. Gang members total 778,000, a statistically significant increase over the 12-year low recorded in 2001.

Defining Violence Down

In 1967, following several years of growing public concerns and political debates about "crime in the streets," the President’s Crime Commission put crime on the national policy agenda to stay. Yet crime is not less prevalent today than it was when it first became a national issue: Measured by the UCR, the overall (violent and property) crime rate per 100,000 residents was 25 percent higher in 2007 (3,730) than it was in 1967 (2,990). The violent crime rate per 100,000 persons was 160.9 in 1960, 363.5 in 1970, 596.6 in 1980, and 731.8 in 1990. It peaked at 758.2 in 1991, and had already fallen to 684.5 when Biden issued his aforementioned report in 1995. Over the next decade it fell to 469.0 in 2005, and was 454.5 in 2008–lower today than it was in the 1980s and 1990s, but higher today than it was in the 1960s and 1970s.

Crime has receded from its horrific pre-1994 highs, and still more widespread youth crime carnage has not happened; but, in absolute terms and relative to the enormous public and private investments and behavioral changes Americans of every demographic description and socioeconomic status have made, we are in 2010 left with more serious crime and violence, and a larger prison-industrial complex, than befits us as a free and democratic people.

By any definition, much of the crime and violence that we do have is horrific. In 2006, Boston surpassed its 1982 homicide high, and was once again witnessing shocking murders like that of a 20-year-old mother who was shot to death while visiting the shrine commemorating her brother’s murder on the same day four years earlier. In 2008, a 36-year-old Starbucks manager in Philadelphia, while walking home from work, was ambushed and killed by several students from one of the city’s 25 public schools classified as "persistently dangerous." They chose him at random and attacked him for amusement. And, in 2009, a 16-year-old football player on his school’s honor roll was beaten to death with wood planks while walking home and getting caught between rival gangs in Chicago–with which he had no involvement and to which he gave no offense.

Sadly, such bloody statistics and anecdotes now seem less likely to make people shudder than to make them shrug. The reasons are to be found in what my late friend Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan defined as post-1960 Americans’ taste for "defining deviancy down." Writing under that title for The American Spectator in 1993, Moynihan reasoned that the

amount of deviant behavior in American society has increased beyond the levels that the community can afford to recognize and that, accordingly, we have been re-defining deviancy . . . and also quietly raising the "normal" level in categories where behavior is now abnormal by an earlier standard.

"So it goes," Moynihan concluded, as "violent killings, often random, go on unabated. Peaks continue to attract some notice. But these are peaks above ‘average’ levels that thirty years ago would have been thought epidemic."

Moynihan’s words ring truer today than when he wrote them 17 years ago. For, following record murder and mayhem by and against our young, we now console and even congratulate ourselves for receding to a post-1994 crime plateau that we seem eerily content to wink at as average rather than wince at as a soul-sickening "epidemic of violence." We justify this chilling complacency by noting that this plateau crime rate does not plainly presage ever higher levels of horrifying violence, and ignore the reality that it has been purchased with more finances and freedoms than any previous generation has ever expended for public safety and personal security.

Six Steps to Zero Prison Growth

Vice President Joseph Biden was a chief architect of the 1994 federal crime bill, notable for its balanced and bipartisan approach to crime prevention and enforcement. On crime policy, he remains popular with law enforcement officials and respected by diverse experts. Flanked by Obama and Holder, Biden should lead in proposing a new federal crime bill that will help us punish smarter (not harder) and target resources on at-risk youth so that they do not become adjudicated juveniles, predatory criminals, or incarcerated adults.

The bill’s overarching objective should be to cut adult felony crime and reduce youth violence by at least half while achieving zero federal and state prison growth by or before 2020. Many different approaches could help get us there, but I would nominate six ideas for consideration.

First of all, empanel a bipartisan presidential crime commission like the one that President Lyndon Johnson empanelled some four decades ago to devise better crime measures; study crime trends; conduct field hearings from New York to New Orleans; debate new crime-fighting technologies (like, in our day, the use of DNA databases); and weigh the wisdom of having an advisory staff on crime within the West Wing, a sort of crime-focused National Security Council.

Second, legislate age 18 as a compulsory national school attendance requirement, or amend all relevant federal education legislation so that states, on penalty of losing federal funding, must comply with their own respective compulsory school age requirements (many are age 16) and offer best-practices anti-truancy programs. In several recent co-authored reports sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and issued by Civic Enterprises, I have documented the high school dropout crisis and the associated truancy epidemic. Several studies by others have confirmed that low graduation rates are strongly linked to high crime rates and high incarceration rates, especially for low-income minority males. By increasing inner-city graduation rates, even by single digits, we might well lower juvenile crime rates by double digits.

Third, mandate that juvenile probation agencies emulate or replicate programs like Philadelphia’s Youth Violence Reduction Partnership (YVRP). I helped devise the YVRP in 1998. The program targets local adjudicated youth and young adults aged 14 to 24, most of whom have committed one or more violent felonies. The YVRP assigns these "youth partners" to "street workers" with whom they meet almost daily, and it assures that they get whatever drug treatment or other supports they need. A just-released impact study by Public/Private Ventures finds that YVRP participation reduces juvenile violent crime by 10 percent.

Fourth, each year through 2020, double the 2009 levels of federal aid to state and local parole agencies for programs that find ex-prisoners jobs, and to faith-based and neighborhood partnerships that mobilize adult mentors for some of the over two million children in America who have a parent in prison. The empirical research is clear: Getting jobs for ex-prisoners is a necessary but insufficient condition for reducing recidivism rates that typically run around two-thirds after three years out. Since 2000, the federal government has invested slightly more in job-mentoring programs for ex-prisoners and, in recent years, it has helped fund mentoring for more than 100,000 children of prisoners. But the investment remains paltry.

Fifth, repeal all federal mandatory-minimum drug sentencing policies and rewrite federal laws to give states new financial incentives to use scarce prison space for violent adult offenders while speeding parole for drug-only offenders. I do not make this suggestion lightly. BJS data indicate that eight in ten prisoners confined in state and federal prisons have a prior conviction history and about two in three prisoners have a history of convictions for violence; that the average released prisoner has more than 15 prior arrests for serious offenses; and that a single year’s worth of prison releases accounts for about 8 percent of all murder arrests and 9 percent of all arrests for robbery. However, based on both BJS data and prisoner self-report surveys, it seems clear that most of the roughly 400,000 persons incarcerated as drug felons in state or federal prisons today are "drug-only felons" whose sole felony crimes (including ones for which they were never arrested) have been drug crimes involving no use or threat of violence and no major role as illegal drug manufacturers or distributors. At least 100,000 of these could be placed under intensive parole supervision (complete with mandated drug treatment where necessary) tomorrow with little or no adverse impact on crime rates. The financial savings would be more than sufficient to fund all of the foregoing proposals.

Sixth, legalize marijuana for medically prescribed uses, and seriously consider decriminalizing it altogether. Last year there were more than 800,000 marijuana-related arrests. The impact of these arrests on crime rates was likely close to zero. There is almost no scientific evidence showing that pot is more harmful to its users’ health, more of a "gateway drug," or more crime-causing in its effects than alcohol or other legal narcotic or mind-altering substances. Our post-2000 legal drug culture has untold millions of Americans, from the very young to the very old, consuming drugs in unprecedented and untested combinations and quantities. Prime-time commercial television is now a virtual medicine cabinet ("just ask your doctor if this drug is right for you"). Big pharmaceutical companies function as all-purpose drug pushers. And yet we expend scarce federal, state, and local law enforcement resources waging "war" against pot users. That is insane.

The Next Great Crime Drop

America has long experienced unacceptable levels of crime, including predatory violence by and against our youth and young adults. And there is no denying that, 16 years into a national crime drop, the levels remain unacceptable in absolute terms and higher than they were in the early 1960s. But there are better ways to measure crime and better ways to meet that half-century-old crime challenge. After growing at an average annual rate of 6.5 percent during the 1990s, the prison population has grown at an average annual rate of 1.8 percent since 2000.

But prison populations need not grow at all over the next decade if Washington policymakers act soon to usher in more humane and cost-effective crime policies. Americans need not continue to purchase such safety as they enjoy by forsaking freedom for themselves and depriving it to others. We can instead reclaim for ourselves, for our children and grandchildren, and for the children and families of prisoners and ex-prisoners, such lost social and civic luxuries as unlocked front doors, lone late-night walks wherever you please, and everyday life lived among friends and fellow citizens in real American communities. Call the new federal crime bill "The Zero Prison Growth, Youth Violence Prevention, and Compassionate Drug Policy Act of 2010." And let the next, and best, crime drop in modern American history begin.