WASHINGTON - My old friend, Steve Nawojczyk, used to be the coroner in Pulaski County, Ark., whose seat is Little Rock, the state's capital and its largest city. Newly deceased bodies were his business - grim, but necessary.

For reasons both complex and simple, Little Rock became a hotbed for juvenile street gangs in the 1990s - so much so that, of all places, cable giant HBO chose that midsize city as a microcosm of the gang epidemic sweeping the nation. The result was an award-winning 1993 documentary called "Gang War: Bangin' in Little Rock."

At the time, Little Rock had 50 known gangs. And it had Nawojczyk. Pained by the increasing number of young homicide victims he was seeing as coroner, Nawojczyk set out to investigate gang life - the "bangin' life," as it was often called back then. For the most part, he discovered, the rank-and-file were destitute children - what Nawojczyk now calls "the 5-H Club: helpless, hopeless, homeless, hungry and hug-less."

Nawojczyk eventually resigned his coroner's post and threw himself, full force and full-time, into trying to cure the gang disease.

"I wanted to use what I'd learned in studying death to help the living," Nawojczyk says. "This desire led me on an eight-year journey to over 35 states around the country, researching and teaching about the causes and commonalties of juvenile violent crime. I spoke what I knew, having earned a hard-knocks-and-heartache degree on the bloody streets of my hometown."

If anyone understands what drives young people to gangs, and what keeps them there, it's Steve Nawojczyk. He is not what W.E.B. DuBois decried as a "drive-by sociologist." He has won the confidence of some of the nation's most hardened gang members. He has all but lived the life himself.

That's why, when Steve Nawojczyk sounds the alarm over the demise of preventative programs to give endangered kids something to hang onto, the country had best listen up. And he's furiously ringing the bell now because cities and states are bleeding the programs dry, thanks to the federal budget crisis.

Given George W. Bush's smooth, calm demeanor and his tireless reassurances, it may not feel like a crisis, but it is. Many of the services most of us have come to expect from government are being cut back. The Feds' check is not in the mail, thanks, largely, to Bush's have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too economic policy. He gave us tax cuts we couldn't afford even before Iraq began draining the treasury.

As a result, the have-nots are having less. Affordable housing and low-income housing vouchers? Down. Loans for college students at public schools? Down. Intervention and prevention programs for at-risk youth? Down.

"President Bush is asking for $87 billion to rebuilt Iraq while, in Los Angeles, children are being shot as they await school buses," Nawojczyk wrote in a recent column on his Web site, www.GangWar.com. "Around the country, violent crime is inching toward numbers unseen in America since the late 1980s and early 1990s, or the 'decade of slaughter' as I've sometimes called it."

It is reminiscent of what Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, has said vis-à-vis the war in Iraq: Hopelessness is a weapon of mass destruction; homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction; poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. In short, if we're serious about removing the threat to peace at home, we need to start at home, or in the very least, make home part of the package.

There's this worrisome tendency among us Americans to know, in our guts, what it takes to prevent or fix some problems yet to refuse the hard work it takes to do it. We are an instant-gratification nation; we want the reward now.

But stamping out gangs is not immediately gratifying. It's incremental and it's painstaking. It is, sometimes, two steps forward and one step back. But just as we didn't get to Baghdad in one leap, neither can this campaign be immediately decisive.

It is just as important, however. More so, in fact. If caring about other people's kids isn't enough to move us, then perhaps our own self-interest will. Ignoring them, blaming them, neglecting them will not make the problem go away. There will be a confrontation eventually. And we can't build enough jails or dig enough graves to contain them all. They may get us before al-Qaida has a chance.

© 2003 Tribune Media Services, Inc