Snapshots of life in the Golden State. : On Crime, Study Finds Kids Hard-Nosed, Soft-Headed

The good news: California youngsters say punishment would deter them from crime, and most want stricter enforcement.

The bad news: Half admit they’ve already broken the law.

The State Bar surveyed 600 kids, ages 10 to 14, and found contradictory patterns of strict law and order attitudes, some deep ignorance and some widespread defiance.

* More than eight in 10 support laws against minors smoking, drinking, shoplifting, making graffiti, stealing or having guns.

* The most-broken laws: skipping school, defying curfew and--among 30%--beating someone up. One in 10 admitted smoking cigarettes or shoplifting, and 1% acknowledged having used hard drugs or carrying a gun.

* Surprising numbers don’t know that it’s illegal to beat up someone (31%), hit a family member (17%), break into someone else’s locker (17%) or violate curfew (36%).

* Civil libertarian alert: More than seven in 10 think joining a gang should be illegal, and more than four in 10 believe that wearing gang colors should be illegal.

Boys know less about the laws than girls do, and are more likely to break them. And of those who admit they’d misbehave, only half would do so if their parents were to find out.

Oh, yes, and now a message from the survey’s sponsors: Almost as many kids respect lawyers (82%) as police (95%-plus).

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Child Support

California’s 58 counties vary widely in their performance in collecting child support payments, the advocacy group Children Now says. The statewide average is $2.64 collected for each dollar spent on administrative costs. Here is how selected counties rank, measured by their cost effectiveness:

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Total Per Dollar County Collections Spent Rank Tuolumne $2,326,168 $5.60 1 San Diego $41,708,156 $3.35 8 Riverside $41,837,819 $3.21 10 San Bernardino $41,218,356 $3.12 14 Orange $53,083,701 $3.12 15 Santa Barbara $16,291,647 $2.69 32 Ventura $29,688,688 $2.11 49 Los Angeles $166,980,700 $2.03 52 Alpine $89,346 $1.70 58

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Source: California Department of Social Services, Child Support Management Information System Annual Report, 1994-95

Compiled by NONA YATES / Los Angeles Times

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Save the date: The California Teachers Assn. pocket calendar is being politicized, Lenoed and Lettermanned to a fare-thee-well, and the latest to join in is GOP Assemblyman David Knowles, who distributed it with the warning, “These are the people who teach our children!”

What shocked the solon is not the calendar’s month-by-month pages, which list the standard holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, but a one-page “Dates to Remember” that notes:

* Feb. 19, the commemoration of the World War II internment of Japanese Americans, but not Pearl Harbor Day.

* Juneteenth, the Stonewall Rebellion anniversary and Cinco de Mayo, but not Fourth of July (it’s in the main calendar).

* The birthdays of the Buddha, Muhammad and the founder of Jainism, but not Martin Luther King Jr. birthday or Christmas (again, main calendar has them).

* Flag Day but not Veterans Day, American Indian Citizenship Day but not Thanksgiving (main calendar again).

A CTA spokeswoman has heard this before from “conservatives who want to make hay with it,” but she says California schoolkids have so many faiths and cultures that a teacher needs to know what’s what if, let’s suppose, a student comes up and asks for Mahavira’s birthday off as a religious holiday.

The bigger question: Is Hallmark missing a good bet here?

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The sandman cometh: Not since Manhattan-for-beads has there been such a land deal. At the suggestion of its Shoreline Erosion Committee, San Diego County is considering sending its trash to La Paz, Ariz. (for a fee), in return for pristine white surplus desert sand to replenish its retreating beaches.

If only receding hairlines could be so easily filled in.

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One-offs: It’s long past Maundy Thursday, when the pope traditionally washes the feet of 12 beggars, but as a “gesture of humbling,” a Grass Valley candidate for Superior Court judge has offered to wash the feet of all 174 attorneys in Nevada County. . . . Thieves carried off everything from a Modesto church--muffins, toys, toilet paper--except a computer and the collection plate cash. . . . Radio and Television News Directors Assn. advisory sent out before the state’s most recent execution: “RTNDA is unable to provide a catering truck for media covering the Keith Williams execution at San Quentin. Please have your personnel bring an ice chest with drinks and food for your crew and reporters.” . . . The San Francisco Library’s children’s collection eschews Nancy Drew from its shelves for being “very obviously series books [full of] lazy writing.”

EXIT LINE

“All my friends are in prison.”

--Richard Allen Davis, confessed killer of Polly Klaas, who was asked in a videotaped interview with investigators whether he had any friends in Petaluma, site of the girl’s abduction.

California Dateline appears every other Friday.