Crime unchanging -- Every year for decades, the Virgin Islands has had 20 or more homicides -- most committed with guns, most done by young men and most resulting from arguments. For example, in homicide No. 17 of 1991's 27 slayings, John Lewis, 21, was shot 13 times by a machine-gun wielding young assailant after they argued over a debt. Forensics officer Liston Gumbs lifts the cover to examine Lewis, lying dead where he was gunned down on a Bovoni street.

He looks like your average 19-year-old, but he isn't.

A product of the squalid, crimeridden JFK housing project on St. Croix, he learned about drugs and guns at an early age. He learned too well. By the time he was 16, police say, he had killed one man and helped murder another--both in cold blood.

He has never spent a day in jail.

He has, police complain, literally gotten away with murder.

His case is far from unique in the Virgin Islands, where crime without punishment is the norm, where careers in crime and violence begin early and where law enforcement and justice systems are so inept and irregular that they perpetuate crime.

The two-time killer, whose name cannot be printed because he was a juvenile when he committed the crimes, claimed his first victim in the chill between midnight and dawn on a Sunday in March 1991.

The youth, then 15, hopped out of a pickup truck and tried to rob construction supervisor Randall Eveans, who was walking with a friend near his Mill Harbour home. Eveans backed away, then turned and ran. But the youth, armed with a handgun, chased the 28-year-old man and shot him in the back. Eveans died on the spot.

Police picked up the youth, and eyewitnesses identified him as the gunman. The U.S. Attorney's Office recommended to the Attorney General's Office, which has jurisdiction over juvenile cases, that the youth be tried for murder.

But the Attorney General's Office did not even charge him, so the police sent him home to his grandmother.

By comparison, Errol Nelson, the youth's 16-year-old accomplice in the fatal robbery, was tried as an adult and received a 25-year prison terrn in a combined sentence for his role in that crime and an unrelated murder.

Just six months after the Eveans shooting, the 15-year-old killed again, police say.

This time, the victim was construction worker Reynaldo "Ras Punky" Rivera. He was shot six times and left to die, pouring blood on a deserted Christiansted street on a September night in l991.

The youth was picked up and questioned. Police were certain that he was one of the killers.

Prosecutors did not even charge him. They sent him home to his grandmother--again.

In the three years since the killings, he has kept up his criminal ways. He has been arrested, again and again, on charges of drug possession, car theft and assault ing an officer. But to date, he has done no time. Each time, he has been sent home to his grandmother.

Why? The public is not allowed to know. Darryl Donohue, the assistant attorney general in charge of the St. Croix office, says V.l. privacy laws governing juvenile cases prevent him from talking about why the youth was not prosecuted.

The case of this violent teenager gives a glimpse of a criminal justice system gone awry.

Homicide is the No. 1 cause of death among Virgin Islands males between the ages of 15 and 30.

This year, the territory is averaging a slaying every 10 days. As of today, the Virgin Islands has had a record 32 homicides since Jan. 1.

Each year the killers get younger, the weapons deadlier and the crimes more brutal.

The escalating violence has put the community on edge and threatens the territory's billion dollar tourism industry.

Who and what are to blame?

The easy answer is young thugs, whose numbers are constantly increasing and who are fighting for turf, respect and profits from crimes. But the real answer goes beyond the criminals to:

• Ready availability of guns.
• Widespread drug use.
• Lack of crime prevention programs.
• Tainted law enforcement, crippled by a reputation for corruption and incompetence.
• Poorly trained prosecutors.
• Inefficient and excessively lenient probation system.
• Overburdened courts notorious for light sentences.

A six-month Daily News investigation, which included the examination of thousands of pages of court documents and police records as well as scores of interviews with community leaders, law enforcement agents and other government officials, has uncovered serious problems in the way the territory dispenses justice. And those problems are at the heart of the current crime crisis. Among The Daily News' findings:

• Dangerous convicts have been released long before completing their sentences, often without proper supervision and despite prison records indicating they were still violent. Some have gone on to commit murder.
• More than 21,000 guns--at least two-thirds of them unlicensed--are in the territory, according to law enforcement estimates. Unlicensed weapons range from cheap Saturday night specials to submachine guns and assault rifles, and many are in the hands of ex-convicts, drug dealers and violent, volatile juveniles, police say.
• An electronic device for keeping track of violent crime suspects on pretrial release is far from foolproof. The people running the system admit that they have no way of tracking suspects--some of whom are charged with murder--when the suspects leave their area of confinement. And the Territorial Court marshals who monitor the suspects' movements work only from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. They don't work nights, they don't work weekends and they don't work holidays.
• Mistakes by police or prosecutors allow more than one-third of all the people arrested to have their charges dropped without ever going to trial.
• Only 36 percent of all violent crime cases that go to Territorial Court end in convictions.
• Plea bargains account for more than four-fifths of all Territorial Court convictions, consistently undermining tough new V.l. laws meant to deter violent criminals. Only 18 percent of violent crime convictions come from judge or jury verdicts; 82 percent come from plea bargains. A plea bargain means that criminals escape punishment for their actual crimes by saying they are guilty of something less serious.
• Two-thirds of the people convicted in Territorial Court are not sentenced to do time.
• The 32 percent of the violent criminals who are sentenced in Territorial Court to prison time get light sentences; the average is eight months.
• Local prisons are so lacking in rehabilitation and education programs that these institutions are revolving doors. Statistics show that 40 percent of V.l. convicts will break the law again within two years of their release and two of every three will eventually end up committing more crimes.
• Police officers, sworn to uphold the law, have themselves been linked to criminal activity, including drug dealing, robbery, rape and murder. Since 1985, 20 officers in a force ranging in size from 315 to 518 have been convicted of crimes and scores more have been fired or reprimanded for criminal or unethical behavior.
• Fewer than 10 percent of the crimes reported to police are even investigated. Police say they assess a crime's "solvability" to determine whether to spend time on the case. They say that investigating every crime would take time away from their work on serious felonies. But the result is that 90 percent of all crimes reported are never even investigated.
• The Police Department has been billed $80,000 so far this year for hospital treatment for people injured by the officers who arrested them. Suspects were treated for everything from gunshot wounds to broken limbs.
• The high dropout rate in the territory's schools funnels youths into crime. Only 7 percent of prison inmates in the territory finished high school compared with 66 percent of the adult population who did.
• The Virgin Islands does little to steer youth away from criminal activity.