BARBARA LAWALL had not intended to become a prosecutor.

She was a high school English teacher, frustrated with what she calls the "quagmire of school administration" and a number of things she thought were not being handled properly in the schools. She decided to get a law degree so that she'd be able to return to the education system and work on education law in a way that would "make a difference with our kids."

She never made it back to the classroom.

Halfway through law school at the University of Arizona, LaWall found herself with a multi-faceted dilemma: she was divorced, had a new baby and needed a job in order to continue in law school. The only office that was hiring at the time was the Pima County attorney. So LaWall abandoned the idea of going back to teaching and began her career as a law clerk in the prosecutor's office. Working in a busy trial-active, fast-paced office suited her personality, her energy and her aversion to sitting at a desk doing paper work.

LaWall moved steadily up the ladder until 24 years later, she has the office's top job -- Pima County attorney -- the first woman elected to hold that position. But the school children have not lost a champion. She still considers helping children and working with families one of her top priorities -- so much so that she has become a nationally recognized authority on juvenile justice, parental kidnapping and domestic violence.

Pima is a diverse county of 865,000 that touches the Mexican border and includes Tucson, five other incorporated cities, three Indian reservations and the University of Arizona. LaWall supervises a staff of 400, of whom 80 are attorneys. The office handles both criminal cases and those civil matters involving county departments and the board of supervisors. This staff of attorneys is divided into three major divisions: criminal, with 54 attorneys; child support, with seven attorneys; and civil, which has 19 attorneys.

While her office handles everything from homicides to collecting on bad checks, persuading deadbeat dads to pay their child support payments and providing legal advice to county officials, LaWall admits to a special emphasis.

"It's my commitment to crime prevention," she says, "primarily for young people. Preventing them from becoming the next generation of criminals, while also creating a pro-active community leadership role, and collaboration between our office and the community to prevent crime is an important role for me as the county attorney."

LaWall, an NDAA vice president, is a firm advocate of the concept of the prosecutor as a community leader. "It's absolutely essential," she explains, "that the county attorney be committed to more than just processing cases. Convicting and punishing criminals is an important role, but it's not the only role. I've really worked hard to bring about a real collaborative partnership and pro-active leadership role to this office, to bring the community into a partnership with my office."

Examples:

The creation of eight community justice boards, in which community residents hear cases of first and second juvenile misdemeanors and mete out sanctions, which range from erasing graffiti and cleaning yards of senior citizens to washing and polishing fire trucks and riding on patrol with police officers.
A criminal eviction assistance program, in which a deputy county attorney works with realtors' organizations and landlords of rental units in identifying and evicting those involved in criminal activity.

Much of Pima County's crime problem is drug-related, primarily because Tucson and Pima County are so close to the Mexican border, a major drug trafficking conduit. With this comes a lot of gang activity, violent crime and a high murder rate, with the result that Pima County is one of the few U.S. areas where the violent crime rate is going up instead of down.

While LaWall believes that the drug culture, the easy availability and prevalence of guns, as well as the glorified and glamorized violence that pervades TV and films are important factors in the increase in juvenile crime, the basic problem in her view is the breakdown in family structure.

"It comes down to a breakdown in parenting," LaWall says. "It's the result of economics, with so many families with both parents working and their failure to exercise control over their children. People complain that there's too much violence in the media, but they take their kids to violent movies and let them see terrible things. They expose them to continuous, repeated violence and they don't set boundaries and don't control it."

She also blames the availability and accessibility of guns, declaring, "I know this sounds corny, but when I was growing up, the shows I watched on TV were "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Leave It to Beaver." All the kids in those shows had conflicts and problems, but they were resolved through communication and understanding the other person's situation. On today's shows, when problems arise, more often than not they're taken care of by taking a gun and killing someone."

LaWall is appalled at the reaction of many parents when she tries to get them involved in her truancy enforcement efforts. "I get a lot of angry parents who yell at me and say it's the school's problem, not theirs. They don't see it as their responsibility. One of the most effective things a prosecutor's office can do is simply hold people accountable. I believe that parents should be forced to attend court with their kids and be sanctioned along with their kids .... We're missing a golden opportunity there."

Like her counterparts across the country, LaWall believes that what she calls "the media's shift to prosecutor-bashing" is the chief challenge facing American prosecutors. "We're being painted as the bad guys, the guys in the black hats," she says, "and we've got to reverse that image. We want people to know that we're professional, we are fair and we are the good guys. We're the ones who work to ensure that the good guys come out on top and that the bad guys don't prevail. We must instill in our young prosecutors the concept that they represent justice, which speaks the truth."

LaWall misses what she calls the adversarial challenge and intellectual stimulation of courtroom prosecution, which she had to give up when she moved up to the heavily administrative job of county attorney. But the upside, she says, is that now "I can be creative, set the direction, dedicate the resources and then I can just do it" without first having to convince someone above her.

Barbara LaWall relaxes from her demanding, stress-filled job by reading, watching movies, traveling and cooking -- especially cooking.

"I like to cook and have people over for dinner," she says. Those fortunate enough to be invited for dinner at the LaWall home have a treat in store, for like everything else she does, Barbara LaWall is very serious about her cooking. She has taken courses under professional chefs at a culinary school in Tucson and plans to take more.

Bon apetit!