Editing 79-07-B7 (section)

=== Transcript ===
One night several months ago , over dinner in New York City , Harvard Professor
Nathan Glazer was discussing what he called the "negative energy" so prevalent in
that city. By "negative energy" he meant the energy people spend doing things such
as littering and scribbling graffiti on subway cars. I asked him how this could
be turned into positive energy . He replied that that was a little like asking "What
is the meaning of life?", and that he had spent 25 years studying urban problems and
didn't profess to have an overall answer. But , he said, he was working on an article
about New York subway graffiti and he would send me a copy when it was published.
He has, and his article in The Public Interest magazine, offers some keen insights
into the outpourings of negative energy,

He describes the elaborate daubings of spray paint that cover so many New York
subway cars, inside and out. He says that in almost every case the graffiti are
signatures of the people who did them. If not actual names, then nicknames. He
points out that "there are not political messages or references to sex -- two chief
topics of traditional graffiti." Professor Glazer says that there is some sentiment
in New York for considering these scribblings as harmless expressions of teenagers,
but there is another side to that coin. He says" ... the cars in which persons
unknown to the passengers have at their leisure marked-up interiors and obscured
maps, informational signs and windows, serves as a permanent reminder to the passenger
that the authorities are incapable of controlling the doers of mischief." Thus,
the fear of crime has cut into the number of people using the subways . And, as the
number of passengers declines the remaining passengers become an easier target for
subway marauders.

The subway police aren't asleep on the job, Nathan Glazer points out. They
have tried arresting the ll-to-16 year olds who make up the graffiti-scribbling
crowd. But, judges, faced with much worse juvenile crimes, tend to let them off 
easy and they go right back to spraying their self-styled "art" on the cars. The
idea of making the offenders clean up the cars as punishment was considered, but
the cost of supervising them proved to be too much,

The graffiti-sprayers tend to go on to more serious crimes . The police studied
the careers of 15-year-old graffiti artists they had caught in 1974. Three years
later, 40 percent had been arrested for more serious crimes, such as burglary and
robbery.

How about summer jobs for these youngsters? Professor Glazer wonders "whether
most jobs available for unskilled youths would match the excitement of painting
graffiti onto silent subway cars in deserted yards, watching for the police, stealing
the paints, organizing the expeditions,"

The police estimate that nearly all the graffiti are made by about 500 teenagers
and they know who they are. Maybe some of our great foundations might put some of
their funds into a program that combined youth employment along with real art
classes and perhaps a chance to spray some graffiti in controlled situations, such as
on the walls of empty buildings. At least that might turn some of that teenage
negative energy into positive energy. 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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