The Atlanta Constitution from Atlanta, Georgia • 11

Friday, June 12, 1992 A I I VIEWPOINTS The Atlanta Journal The Atlanta Constitution THE VIOLENT SOCIETY THELMA, LOUISE, ET AL. Women as a percent of criminals J.D.'S Percent of criminals underage 17 OUR THING Estimated number of organized-crime-group members 50- 40 30- 50TI 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 I I I- 1 1 40-- as zzseeuix- 20- Japan 0 KJ ss P- a a a Annflm fl Italy 10 United States The 'smoking gun' that sets the US. apart from its global competitors li MM B-M at Ml VJCI "AL3D 5 nized crime controls 90 percent of the drug traffic to Hawaii. According to the FBI, the Yakuza's interests also include gun-running, corporate extortion and protection rackets, prostitution, pornography and loan-sharking. While their Mafia counterparts in the United States have been systematically decimated over the past decade by federal prosecutions, the Yakuza, along with other Asian crime organizations, continues to grow in membership, influence and profitability.

MYTH: America is the land of James Dean. REALITY: Ducktails, hot rods and juvenile delinquents have moved to Japan. From the book WHERE WE STAND: CAN AMERI- CA MAKE IT IN THE GLOBAL RACE FOR WEALTH, HEALTH AND HAPPINESS? By Michael Wold, Peter Rutten, Albert F. Bayer III, and the World Rank Research Team, (c) 1992, By Michael Wolff and Inc. Reprinted by permission of the publisher, Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

Dist. by Los Angeles Times Syndicate. Police blotter Nothing separates the United States from the other advanced nations of the world more than the amount and the horror of its violent crime. It is the smoking gun the glaring evidence of what happens when you mix social failure with too many firearms. The reasons for U.S.

crime illustrate the differences between the United States and its competitor nations: its shrinking middle class and rising extremes of wealth and poverty, the lack of social-welfare policies, the deficient educational system, the frontier mythology, the drugs, the guns. Xrime has been on a steady rise throughout Europe and in Japan since the early 1950s, and many criminologists have expected it to "break out" in those countries in a way similar to what has happened in the United States. A rise in crime is often thought to go hand in hand with rising affluence; as the gulf between rich and poor widens, the have-nots turn to illegal means to get their share. -L Affluence also creates a larger' drug market. Throughout much of Europe, street crime thievery and vandalism is on the rise, but it is nowhere near the problem it is in America.

Until recently, most Europe- nese behavior during World War II to explain how and why Americans differ so profoundly, and so horrifyingly, from other, more peaceful human beings. The USdisease'? When 17-year-old Junko Fur-uta, riding her bike home from work, was kidnapped in Tokyo by a group of teenaged boys who took her home, kept her prisoner for 40 days, raped, beat, tortured, burned and starved her, and finally stuffed her into an oil drum and covered her with concrete, it set off a national debate about whether or not the "American disease" was inevitably in Japan's future. "The Devil-Children of the Comics and Video Age U.S. Style Violence, Will It Take Over Japan?" asked a weekly magazine. "You can see the society collapsing," pronounced Susumu Oda, one of Japan's best-known child psychiatrists.

"Sooner or later, what is happening in America will happen here." There were 23,000 murders in America last year; Japan which had 1,441 still has a long way to go. Organized crime Japan's Yakuza, or Boryoku-dan violent grossed more than $10 billion last year by some estimates, one-third of that take coming from their dealings in methamphetamine speed. The FBI says Japan's orga- BY MICHAEL WOLFF PETER RUTTEN ALBERT F. BAYERS 111 AND THE WORLD RANK RESEARCH TEAM PART IV Saturday: Arts of the world an nations looked on drug use as more an illness than a crime. With a rise in both drug use and crime rates, however, that attitude is changing.

In Japan, the penetration of organized crime the Yakuza I into legitimate businesses has, grown at a relentless pace. In- -deed, Japanese mobsters hired President George Bush's brother, Prescott Bush, for advice on an investment. In the area of violent crime murder, rape and armed robbery the United States remains unique. Experts have begun to employ the kind of mass psychological profiles of the type used to understand German and Japa- RAPES I Switzerland 6.15'!' -r I Per 100,000 people i wauH iiiii I MURDERS I HMiiiiiltnU JE2 1 i Per 100,000 people JTli fT I-rtTTi IfM'l Spain 4.43 Sweden 15.70 lim.h 7tVH QQXmZIIXbZZZHEI Belgium 4.00 2 1 Canada 5.45 Germany 8.60 lifflffi LWtM France 4.60 United Kingdom 7 26 mm pfljfl I (Wht II I lUrarTTH W'l Portugal 1,20 I I'aty'liif SffltYl France 6.77 HfTiTTi jflffH i Australia 4.48 1 i nil a Belgium 2.80 Jjr Switzerland 2.25 Norway 1.99 If VXl -IK i I Austria 1.80 1 lite? Sweden 1.73- I to al A Japan 1.20 II Finland 0.70 1 (s, WHITE-COLLAR CRIMES ''jy JH. Per 100,000 people AUTO THEFT Per 100,000 people 3 CO S3 en in in Ul i ui id ee -J o.

et at ui Z. "1 CD in 3 Ul ARMED ROBBERY Per 100,000 people in CM i LlDDnn 10 8 a 5 5 5 ee ui ee a. to V) Ul 3 3 a. oc Vt 3 U. ui as ui U.

Pour it light, but don't stop the beer completely on college campuses Marilyn Geewax In 1920, Americans tried to better society by banning all consumption of alcohol. By the time Prohibition ended in, 1933, drinking was widespread and mobsters, who had kept the gin flowing, were rich and entrenched. 1 By any measure, the social experiment was a failure. Despite that experience, well-intentioned people who wanted to reduce drunk driving pushed hard in the early 1980s for a ban on drinking between ages 18 and 21. Now the wisdom of that policy is be-inn nupstinnprl hv social scientists swimming coach is claiming Tech President John Patrick Crecine allowed underage swim-team members to have alcoholic drinks during banquets at his home.

Exactly what happened is not yet clear, but if the accusation is true, Dr. Crecine is in for lots of criticism. Here's my opinion: If I had a mature 20-year-old guest over for dinner, I would allow her to have a glass of wine. I would want my young friend to see that a moderate amount of alcohol can be consumed without having guests end up in a chugging contest involving liver damage. When I was in college in Ohio in the 1970s, we legally could drink 3.2 beer brews that had a low alcohol content.

That meant we could socialize in bars. In such establishments, bartenders and bouncers were on hand to rnonitor A new study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, indicates this prohibition may be encouraging drunkenness among young people. The survey involved 1,669 freshmen on Massachusetts campuses in 1989 and was compared with a similar sample taken in 1977. The 1989 survey showed 40.9 percent of men and 37 percent of women reported getting drunk one to three times a month. In 1977, only 25 percent of men and 14 percent of women drank that much that often.

Ironically, the more college officials have tried to enforce the "no alcohol" rules on campus, the more kids have fallen into the pattern of binge drinking. "People over 21 really can't drink with younger people, so there are no role models," said Henry Wechsler, who behavior. Professors and graduate stu, dents would meet us undergrads to share pizzas and beers while chatting about journalism. If I were an undergraduate today, my instructors wouldn't meet me in such an informal atmosphere they would be endangering their careers if they did so. I just don't see how this is better.

States banned drinking under 21 to reduce drunkenness, but the opposite is happening: College students are becoming drunks. It's time to bring back "low" beer for 18 year olds. We should get much tougher on drunk drivers, and lighten up oij voting-age adults who drink responsibly. Marilyn Geewax is a ConstituHdn editorial writer. studying the consequences of the new headed the study and is director of the Youth Drug-Alcohol Program at Harvard School of Public Health.

Without elders around, young adults don't see much responsible drinking. "The fact that we're segregating drinkers, so that faculty members can't drink with students, has contributed to this illicit culture where binging is common," he said. Georgia Tech provides an interesting example of this problem. An ex- pronibition. In 1975, 34 states allowed some type qf drinking for people under 21.

For example, many states allowed 18 year olds to drink "low" beer or "light" wine. By all states had banned all alcohol for people under 21..