MISSOURI WATCH: TIME TO ATTACK PROBLEM NO. 1

Between now and next January, joint committees of the General Assembly will investigate, study and recommend changes in a number of fields ranging from post-desegregation public schools to the inadequacies of state mental health services. All of the topics coming under legislative purview concern important, vital services which Missourians need and deserve. Although the public sometimes raises a skeptical eyebrow to these joint committee exercises, they serve a useful function, providing essential information required before effective remedies can be found, enacted and activated.

Curiously, and understandably, the one overlying problem facing the state is not the target of any legislative investigation, nor is the overall matter broadly examined and discussed within any department or branch of government in Jefferson City. The principal dilemma facing the state and its nearly 5.5 million residents is a combination of several different problems, all of them diverse enough by themselves to defy categorical inclusion.

For want of a better term, the most persistent problem facing Missouri as a whole is a societal crime-drug crisis that has effectively diminished the ability of hundreds of thousands of our fellow-citizens to lead normal, productive lives. This crisis has steadily grown to such proportions that it now affects, either directly or indirectly, the vast majority of citizens in the state.

Indeed, the crisis has become so pervasive that it exists in areas deemed untouched just a few brief years ago, and has become so destructive in areas of origination that it has literally transformed both the environment and the fate of those at highest risk. Whether a citizen lives within an urban center or in a remote rural hamlet, the effects of this crisis have already been felt, and like the shocks of a 6.9 earthquake, the tremors continue and threaten to destroy everything within their path.

Consider the current status of the crime-drug crisis:

-- Although enjoying a brief but temporary respite, Missouri's crime rates are extremely high, promising to escalate in the future, as they have in the past, when the demographic scale produces higher criminal-age populations.

-- As recently as two years ago our state had two of the 10 worst urban-crime cities in the nation, with both St. Louis and Kansas City registering higher per capita crimes than cities much larger.

-- As urban crime in the state has momentarily abated, the remainder of towns and cities in Missouri are suffering from criminal prevalence never before experienced. Even small hamlets with 500 or less population are witnessing criminal activity that has never ever occurred with such regularity. Local police and county sheriff departments, most of them understaffed and outgunned, are often unable to maintain the relative peace that citizens once took for granted but now only wistfully recall. Who hasn't heard the plaintive cry: "We never used to lock our doors -- now we're afraid to open them!"?

Missouri's response, like that of every other state in the nation, has been to attack single problems, such as overt criminal activity or drug distribution or inadequate jails, by providing singular responses and solutions. Thus when large cities experience higher-than-usual crime rates, the state has provided temporary contingents from its Highway Patrol. When drug sales went off the charts, the state organized enforcement units that simply lacked the required number to achieve effectiveness. When there were not enough cells to handle the rapid escalation of those being sent to the Department of Corrections, millions more were allocated to construct more and more prisons. When it appeared as if courts were being soft on crime, legislation was enacted to make certain that dangerous offenders were punished for longer periods of time and given less time for any possible hope for rehabilitation.

None of these responses should be minimized, for each is important. Unfortunately, each is essentially ineffective in halting the crisis that now hovers over the state and so frightens millions of our fellow citizens. Indeed, the crisis has become so real and so transforming that it has changed the lives of at least a majority of the residents of our state. Consider the broad exodus of citizens from the urban core units in Missouri, leaving once-thriving cities with the appearance of bombed-out European towns after World War II. This exodus is called urban flight but in reality is an attempt to escape Missouri's crime-drug crisis, and in a very real sense it has created conditions that appear to be irreparable, raising questions that almost defy answering:

-- How can we restore highly disappointing student achievement levels in inner-city schools?

-- Can we guarantee safety in urban neighborhoods to a degree that will assure a return to these areas by those who have taken flight?

-- Can homes in small towns all across the state ever en joy the reassurance of unlocked doors?

-- Can we provide drug prevention and treatment programs that will make the lure of this harmful addiction disappear?

-- Can we find programs that will substitute for the multi million-dollar outlay of tax funds for still more prisons?

Unfortunately our state government is neither asking these questions nor pursuing solutions for the overall problem they represent . Our Governor has yet to call an essential statewide citizens conference dealing with the crisis. The General Assembly is studying related problems but failing to address overall solutions. Whether our elected officials recognize it or not, this is a Missouri problem that can be solved only with resources available to the state.

Missouri is burning. It is time to notice the flames.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.