chapter 8
JUVENILE CRIME AND VICTIMIZATION

For some young people, growing up can be troubling. While their peers are playing football, going to proms, and making plans for adulthood, a certain percentage of juveniles, for whatever reason, have brushes with the law. Each state has its own definition of the term juvenile: most states put the upper age limit at seventeen years old, although some states set it as low as fourteen. In reporting national crime statistics, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) considers people under eighteen to be juveniles. The FBI often breaks its juvenile crime statistics down into age-based subcategories, such as sixteen or older and fifteen or younger, to demonstrate how juvenile offenses vary with age.

ARRESTS

According to Howard N. Snyder's "Juvenile Arrests 2001" (Juvenile Justice Bulletin, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, December 2003), in 2001 there were an estimated 2.3 million arrests of people under age eighteen. (See Table 8.1.) Juveniles made up 17% of all arrests and 15% of violent crime arrests. Property crimes—burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson—accounted for 21.6% of juvenile arrests; drug or liquor law violations accounted for 15%; violent crimes accounted for 4.2% of arrests; and the rest were for a wide variety of offenses including fraud, vandalism, prostitution, offenses against family and children, and vagrancy.

Beginning in the late 1980s and peaking in 1994, there was considerable growth in the number of arrests of juveniles for violent crimes. (See Figure 8.1.) After 1994 the number began to decline, falling 44% between 1994 and 2001. The 2001 juvenile violent crime arrest rate was the lowest it had been since 1983. The juvenile arrest rate for murder fell 70% between its peak in 1993 and 2001.

In 2000 juvenile arrests for property crimes were at the lowest level in more than two decades. (See Figure 8.2.) Among property crimes committed by juveniles, larceny-theft (which includes things like shoplifting, theft from motor vehicles, and bicycle theft) was the most common offense.

Arrests by Gender

Among youths under the age of nineteen, far more males than females are arrested for most types of juvenile crimes. In 2001 28% of all juvenile arrests involved females. (See Table 8.1.) Detailed arrest data available for 2002 show that 150,845 males and 98,016 females under eighteen years old were arrested for larceny-theft; 26,958 males and 5,586 females under eighteen were arrested for motor vehicle theft; 54,915 males and 6,928 females under eighteen were arrested for burglary; and 15,858 males and 2,961 females under eighteen were arrested for receiving, buying, or possessing stolen property. (See Table 8.2 and Table 8.3.) However, more females than males were arrested for running away (54,010 females versus 36,339 males), prostitution, and commercialized vice (729 females versus 366 males).

Girls ages thirteen to fifteen were involved in approximately one-third (33.1%) of all arrests of juveniles in that age group in 2002, and 26% of all arrests of juveniles ages sixteen to seventeen were girls. (See Table 8.2 and Table 8.3.) Between 1980 and 2001 the rate of arrests of juvenile females increased more than the rate for males, particularly for violent crimes. (See Figure 8.3.) The change in arrest rates between 1980 and 2001 for aggravated assault (113% versus 22%), simple assault (257% versus 109%), and weapons law violations (140% versus 16%) were all much higher for females than males.

Arrests by Race/Ethnicity

Table 8.4 shows arrest trends from 1980 to 2001 by offense and race. Asian and Pacific Islander juveniles had the lowest arrest rates in all offense categories. African-American youths accounted for a disproportionate share of juvenile arrests.

TABLE 8.1

DELINQUENCY COURT CASES

For statistical purposes, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) divides juvenile crimes into two general categories: delinquency offenses (acts that are illegal regardless of the age of the perpetrator) and status offenses (acts that are illegal only for minors, such as truancy, running away, curfew violations, ungovernability, and underage drinking).

Since the 1980s the justice system has implemented a variety of "tough-on-crime" policies, from which juvenile offenders are not exempt. When a juvenile is arrested and charged with a violation of criminal law, he or she becomes a delinquency case. When counting delinquency cases, one case can include more than one charge. For example, a youth brought in one time but on three different robbery charges is counted as one case. According to the OJJDP, juvenile courts handled an estimated 1.7 million delinquency cases in 1998 (the most recent year for which these statistics are available), a 44% increase over the 1989 caseload. In the same time period property offenses increased 11%, offenses against persons increased 88%, public order offenses increased 73%, and drug law violations increased 148%. Between 1994 and 1998 significant decreases occurred in several areas, including aggravated assault (22%), criminal homicide (36%), robbery (23%), and motor vehicle theft (28%).

Delinquency and Detention

Juvenile courts hear delinquency cases referred to them from law enforcement agencies, social service agencies,

FIGURE 8.1

schools, parents, probation officers, and victims. In 1997 (the most recent year of data available), law enforcement agencies accounted for 85% of all referrals.

One of the first decisions made in processing a delinquency case is whether the juvenile should be held in a detention facility between referral to the court and case disposition (the time a decision is reached). Detention may be necessary to protect the community from the juvenile, to ensure the juvenile's safety, to have the juvenile evaluated, or to ensure future court appearances. Between 1985 and 2000 the number of delinquency cases involving detention increased 41% (up by 95,200 cases). (See Figure 8.4.) Youths were held in detention facilities at some point between referral and disposition in 20% of all delinquency cases in 2000. In 2000 cases involving property were the least likely to result in detention (16%), while those involving crimes against a person were most likely to result in detention (24%). In the same year African-American youths (25%) were more likely than white youths (18%) to be held in detention.

Delinquency Case Processing

There is no national uniform procedure for processing juvenile delinquency cases, but cases generally follow similar paths. They are first screened by an intake department—the court, a state department of social services, or a prosecutor's office. A case may be handled either formally or informally.

When a case is to be handled formally, a petition must first be filed with the court (the offender is officially

FIGURE 8.2

charged with the offense). The court is asked for either an adjudicatory hearing (where a judge alone rules on the case) or waiver hearing (the juvenile court judge is asked to decide if the case should be waived to a criminal court where the youth will be tried as an adult).

A case is handled informally if the intake officer decides it will be resolved either by dismissing it for lack of evidence, referring it to a social services agency, imposing a fine or some form of restitution, or through informal probation.

Between 1985 and 2000 the number of delinquency cases that were handled formally increased 81%, although the delinquency caseload rose only 43%. In 2000 there were 36% more formal than informal delinquency cases. (See Figure 8.5.)

adjudication and disposition. If a youth is adjudicated delinquent, the juvenile court judge then makes a dispositional decision (imposes a sentence) that could include commitment to a residential facility, probation, referral to another agency or treatment program, fines, restitution, or community service. In 2000 formal probation was the most common outcome, ordered in 63% of adjudicated cases, an increase of 108% since 1985. (See Figure 8.6.) Almost one in four delinquents (24%) were sent to residential facilities, a 49% increase since 1985. Another 11% received other dispositions (sentences), including fines and restitution such as community service or enrollment in a nonresidential treatment or counseling program.

TABLE 8.2

TABLE 8.3

FIGURE 8.3

PROSECUTING MINORS AS ADULTS

Many people believe that some crimes are so terrible that the courts should focus on the type of offense and not the age of the accused in determining the type of trial court. The increase in violent crime among juveniles from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s saw U.S. juvenile courts handling 84% more criminal homicide cases in 1995 than in 1986. Voters were outraged over the crime wave, and lawmakers responded with tough new policies, including trying more juveniles in adult criminal courts.

TABLE 8.4

FIGURE 8.4

Historically, the states relied mainly on a judge's decision to waive delinquents to adult criminal court, but between 1992 and 1997 all but six states enacted laws that made it easier for more juveniles to be transferred. As a consequence, all states have some provisions to try juveniles as adults in criminal court. In 1999 fourteen states and the District of Columbia had laws that allowed prosecutors to decide in some cases whether to file in juvenile or criminal court.

FIGURE 8.5

Twenty-nine states had laws that required certain juvenile offenders to be waived to criminal court. The number of juvenile cases waived to criminal court more than doubled between 1985 and 1994, the peak year, and then declined 58% through 2000. (See Figure 8.7.) In 2000 more offenses against persons were referred to criminal court (2,200) than any other, followed by property offenses (2,000).

FIGURE 8.6

Does the Practice Make a Difference?

An OJJDP study released in 2000 explored the issue of transferring juvenile offenders to adult criminal courts and the impact on recidivism (reoffending) (H. Snyder, M. Sickmund, and E. Poe-Yamagata, Juvenile Transfers to Criminal Court in the 1990s: Lessons Learned from Four Studies). The authors of the study discuss research from the 1990s that compared the recidivism rate of juveniles transferred to adult court with the rate of juveniles who were retained in the juvenile system. The research showed that transfers to adult court were more likely than juveniles kept in juvenile court to reoffend within two years. A six-year follow-up study showed that there was no difference between the groups in the proportion of offenders who reoffended, but the transferred juveniles who reoffended did so more quickly and more often than the retained juveniles who reoffended. In explaining these results, the authors found that transfer to adult court is usually reserved for the most serious cases and the most serious juvenile offenders. In making the decision to waive a juvenile offender, judges tended to look upon a history of reoffending after serving time in a correctional facility as a key factor.

Changing Philosophies

Traditionally, the philosophical difference between juvenile delinquency proceedings and adult criminal proceedings was that the juvenile offender was viewed as misguided and correctable rather than as criminal. Juveniles were considered "delinquent," not guilty; they received treatment, not punishment. Juvenile proceedings took place in a closed court to protect the offender and his or her family, and there were wide discretionary powers for probation officers, the court, and correction agencies,

FIGURE 8.7

depending upon a youth's history. Long-term incarceration was rare, and cases were disposed of quickly with a broad range of disposition alternatives.

The new trend in juvenile justice is to process juveniles as adults. If they are treated like adults, chronic offenders may receive adult sentences, removing them from society, avoiding the notion of rehabilitation, and replacing it with punishment for a crime committed. On the other hand, in an adult court juveniles are entitled to open courtroom proceedings and jury trials, and they avoid a closed system controlled by one judge.

OPENING JUVENILE RECORDS

Traditionally, juvenile hearings were closed to the public and the records were sealed based on the belief that delinquent behavior by a child should not be held against him or her for the rest of his or her life, but many states are now allowing more openness. According to the National Center for Juvenile Justice, in 2002 twenty-one states required that under certain conditions delinquency hearings be open to the public, and fifteen states had laws that closed all delinquency hearings to the public. Forty-three states required that police departments notify school officials when a student was charged with a crime.

STATUS OFFENSE CASES

Status offenses are behaviors that are law violations only when committed by a juvenile (such as possession of alcohol, truancy, and running away from home). According to the OJJDP, juvenile courts formally handled an estimated 158,500 status offense cases in 1997 (the latest year for which statistics are available). In many communities social service agencies rather than juvenile courts have assumed responsibility for status offenders. National estimates of informally handled status offense cases are not calculated because of differences in screening procedures. The statistics, therefore, focus on formally handled (petitioned) status offense cases.

In 1997 approximately 26% of petitioned status offenses involved a liquor law violation, 26% a truancy charge, 13% ungovernability, and 15% runaway charges. Other types of status offenses, such as curfew violations, accounted for the remaining 20%. Between 1993 and 1997 the rate for runaway cases increased 14%, truancy grew by 14%, liquor law violations rose by 39%, and the case rate for ungovernability offenses increased 35%. The nation's juvenile courts processed 5.5 cases for every one thousand juveniles in the population in 1997.

The FBI reported that more than 55% of formal status offense cases in 1997 involved youths fifteen years old or younger. The most common offense in this age group was truancy (34%), while older youths most often violated the liquor laws (42%).

CHILDREN IN CUSTODY

There are many different types of facilities for delinquent youth, including juvenile detention centers, shelters, reception and diagnostic centers, training schools, and group homes. Not all youths placed in these facilities are accused delinquent and status offenders, however. Some are placed for treatment or as a result of abuse, dependency, or neglect. Others are held temporarily while arrangements are being made.

Prisons and Jails

According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) survey, in 1998 1.4% of 592,462 individuals confined in adult jails were seventeen or younger. The number of juveniles confined in the adult jails surveyed increased 366% between 1983 and 1998. The BJS survey revealed that 0.4% (4,775) of one million prisoners confined in state prisons in 1998 were juveniles. Most state prison systems house juveniles. Florida and Connecticut had the highest numbers of juvenile prisoners in adult prisons (572 and 505, respectively), and Hawaii and Rhode Island had the lowest numbers (two and zero, respectively). About 23% of the youths were being held as adjudicated juvenile offenders or pretrial detainees, while 75% had been sentenced as adults.

HOLDING PARENTS RESPONSIBLE

Many Americans became frustrated by the rising juvenile crime rates in the 1980s and early 1990s. In response, communities and states passed laws holding parents responsible for their children's actions. According to the National Center for Juvenile Justice, a nonprofit research organization, at the end of the 1998 legislative session, thirty-four states had statutes that made parents of delinquent children liable to the victim of the crime. Thirty-nine states had statutes that either allowed or required parents of delinquents to participate in treatment, counseling, or probation with their children.

All states have laws that make it mandatory or optional for the court to require parents to pay at least some of the costs for a child who is delinquent and placed out of the home. Some have laws that hold parents partially responsible for their children's delinquent behavior. A Louisiana law allows parents to be fined up to $1,000 and imprisoned for up to six months if they are found guilty of "improper supervision of a minor" (for example, if the child is associating with drug dealers, members of a street gang, or convicted felons). In 1995 Judge Wayne Creech of Family Court in Columbia, South Carolina, ordered that a fifteen-year-old girl with a history of shoplifting and truancy be chained to her mother for one month. A Florida mother was convicted of truancy and sentenced to a year's probation because three of her five children refused to go to school.

CURFEWS

Because of the rise in rates of juvenile crime from the 1980s through the mid-1990s, many of the nation's jurisdictions imposed youth curfews. A 2000 survey of 490 cities by the National League of Cities found that 69% (337) had nighttime curfews and 14% (68) had daytime curfews. Thirty-five of the cities surveyed reported that they were considering adopting a curfew.

Most curfew laws restrict juveniles to their home or property between the hours of 11p.m. and 6 a.m. weekdays, allowing them to stay out later on weekends. The laws allow exceptions for young people going to and from school, church events, or work, and for youths who have a family emergency or are accompanied by their parents. Critics of such ordinances argue that they violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution and abridge parental rights. The critics also argue that no studies have proven the effectiveness of curfew laws.

Court Rulings on Curfews

In 1994 the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that a Dallas, Texas, curfew law was constitutional. But in 2003 the Washington State Supreme Court struck down the city of Sumner's curfew law (Walsh v. City of Sumner [No. 71451–7]). The court ruled that Sumner's curfew ordinance, which makes it unlawful for juveniles to "remain" in a public place during certain hours, is unconstitutionally vague because "it does not provide 'ascertainable standards for locating the line between innocent and unlawful behavior.'" The court noted that "it may be difficult for a city to draft a curfew ordinance that is not unconstitutionally vague" because "curfew ordinances attempt to make activities that are normally considered innocent, unlawful, i.e., walking, driving, going to the store." And in July 2004 the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Indiana issued an injunction prohibiting enforcement of Indiana's juvenile curfew law.

Do Curfews Reduce Crime?

The U.S. Conference of Mayors conducted a 1997 survey of 276 cities with a nighttime youth curfew and asked city officials how they felt about it. Officials in nine out of ten of the cities thought that curfew enforcement was a good use of police officers' time; 88% felt that enforcing a curfew made their city's streets safer; and 83% said curfews help curb gang violence. Of the 154 cities that had had their curfew in effect for ten years or less, officials in 53% of them noted a decrease in juvenile crime (attributed by them to the curfew), 11% saw no change, and 10% saw an increase in juvenile crime (the remaining 26% of cities had no data on the curfew's effects available because of its recent implementation).

However, the effects of curfews on juvenile crime rates are still controversial. In their study entitled "An Analysis of Curfew Enforcement and Juvenile Crime in California" (Western Criminology Review, 1999), Mike Males and Dan Macallair concluded that there was "no support for the proposition that stricter curfew enforcement reduces youth crime or risk of violent fatality…. Curfew enforcement generally has no discernible effect on youth crime." A national study done by David McDowall, Colin Loftin, and Brian Wiersma also found that curfew laws had little effect on juvenile arrests ("The Impact of Youth Curfew Laws on Juvenile Crime Rates," Crime and Delinquency, 2000).

YOUTH GANGS

The modern street gang takes many forms. Individual members, gang cliques, or entire gang organizations may traffic in drugs; operate car theft rings; commit shootings, assaults, robbery, extortion, and other felonies; and terrorize neighborhoods. The most ambitious gangs spread out from their home jurisdictions to other cities and states. Many are supported by the sale of crack cocaine, heroin, and other illegal drugs, and they often have relatively easy access to high-powered guns and rifles. Furthermore, in many impoverished and transitional neighborhoods, children are born into or must contend with second- and third-generation street gangs.

Defining Gangs

Attempts to collect data about gangs at the national level have been complicated by the fact that definitions differ as to what constitutes a gang. The 1998 National Youth Gang Survey asked law enforcement officials about the characteristics they consider important in defining a youth gang. The characteristics most often named were that a gang:

• Commits crimes together.
• Has a name.
• Hangs out together.
• Claims a turf or territory of some sort.
• Displays/wears common colors or other insignia.
• Has a leader or several leaders.

In the 2002 National Youth Gang Survey, a gang was defined as "a group of youths or young adults in [the respondent's] jurisdiction that [the respondent] or other responsible persons in [the respondent's] agency or community are willing to identify or classify as a 'gang.'" The survey respondents (law enforcement agents) were instructed to exclude motorcycle gangs, hate or ideology groups, prison gangs, and exclusively adult gangs.

Young Juveniles in Gangs

Gangs sometimes serve as families for children whose own families are dysfunctional. Gang members have said there is often little need to intimidate youngsters in order to recruit them because they know what children need and are willing to provide it in return for their commitment. Gangs provide emotional support, shelter, and clothing—in essence, just what the child's family may not be providing. However, some children are intimidated into joining gangs either out of fear or for protection from other gangs.

A Pervasive Problem

According to the OJJDP, only nineteen states reported gang problems in the 1970s, but by the late 1990s youth gangs were reported in all fifty states and the District of Columbia (The Growth of Youth Gang Problems in the United States: 1970–98, April 2001). By 1998, 3,700 localities—including about 2,550 cities, towns, and villages, and 1,150 counties—had reported gang problems. Between the mid-1990s and 2002, however, there was a steady decline in reported gang problems, particularly in suburban counties and small cities. (See Figure 8.8.)

Traditionally, gangs were big-city problems. It is still true that the larger the population of a city the greater the likelihood that gangs operate in that city. But gangs have spread to small towns, villages, and rural areas that often do not have their own police departments. In 2002 there were active youth gangs in all of the nation's largest cities, 87% of mid-size cities (with populations between 100,000 and 249,000), 38% percent of suburban counties, 27% of small cities (population below 25,000), and 12% of rural counties. The OJJDP estimated that 21,500 gangs were operating in the United States in 2002, with 731,500 members.

FIGURE 8.8

Portrait of the Modern Youth Gang

The authors of "Hybrid and Other Modern Gangs" examined survey data and the latest research to offer a portrait of the modern youth gang. The stereotypical view holds that youth gangs are tightly organized groups comprised of African-American or Hispanic inner-city males operating under strict codes of conduct with explicit punishments for infractions of the rules. The new "hybrid" gangs may have as members people of both genders, from different racial groups, espousing radically opposing viewpoints; for example, the authors note, a modern gang might be made up of African-Americans, white supremacists, and girls. The gangs are found in schools and the military and in territories as small as shopping malls. Rules or codes of conduct may be unclear. Hybrid gangs sometimes borrow the symbols, graffiti, and even the names of established Los Angeles- or Chicago-based organizations (Bloods and Crips, Black Gangster Disciples, or Vice Lords, for example) but are actually locally based and have no connection to those organizations. Rival gangs may cooperate in criminal activity and mergers of small gangs are common.

The 1998 National Youth Gang Survey reported that an estimated 36% of youth gangs had members from two or more racial or ethnic groups, and that small cities, particularly in the Midwest, had the largest proportion of gangs with mixed race/ethnicity. Other studies show that in most cases the modern adolescent may refuse to join a gang without fear of reprisal, even though gangs try to maintain the illusion that leaving is impossible. OJJDP-supported longitudinal studies in Denver, Colorado (1988–99), Rochester, New York (1986–97), and the Seattle Social Development Project in Seattle (1985–2001) showed that well over half (54–69%) of youths who joined gangs in those cities remained for one year or less, while only 9–21% stayed for three or more years.

According to "Hybrid and Other Modern Gangs," in places where gangs are a fairly recent phenomenon, drug sales and distribution are less likely to be major problems. Gang member involvement in drug sales is most prevalent in areas where gangs emerged between 1981 and 1985, at the height of the crack cocaine epidemic. Highly organized, entrepreneurial, gang control of drug distribution across wide areas—and the violent crime that goes with it—are associated with the gangs that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s in Los Angeles and Chicago.

Court Rulings on Gang Loitering

In order to combat the rise in violent and drug-related crime, which was attributed to a rise in criminal street gang activity, the city of Chicago enacted a Gang Congregation Ordinance in 1992. The ordinance prohibited "criminal street gang members from loitering with one another or with other persons in any public place," regardless of whether the others were fellow gang members. Police officers were required to order any group of people standing around "with no apparent purpose" to move along if the officers believed at least one of them belonged to a street gang. The ordinance had considerable support in the high-crime neighborhoods in which it was implemented. During the three years the law was in effect, more than 42,000 people were arrested for refusing to obey police orders to move along. The ordinance was struck down in 2001 when the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with a lower court that it was unconstitutionally vague and encompassed a great deal of harmless behavior (Chicago v. Morales [No. 97–1121]).

HOMICIDE

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, death rates from homicide doubled from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, fell in the mid-1980s, rose again in the late 1980s, then declined sharply through 2001, reaching an overall rate of 7.1 per one hundred thousand people, including those who died in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But beginning in the mid-1980s the number of teens involved in homicide as either victims and perpetrators rose dramatically. In 2001 homicides were the fourth-leading cause of death in children younger than five years old; the fourth-leading cause for children five to fourteen; and the second-leading cause in fifteen- to twenty-four-year-olds. The youngest victims were more likely to know the perpetrator than adult victims were. More than one-quarter of the victims of gang-related murders were under the age of eighteen. Between 1976 and 1999 children made up 9.8% of the victims of homicide; 10.7% of offenders were under eighteen.

Homicide rates among teens vary dramatically by race. In 2000 young African-Americans of both sexes ages fifteen to twenty-four were six times more likely (20.5 per one hundred thousand) than young whites (3.3 per one hundred thousand) to be murdered. Young African-American men are particularly vulnerable. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 85.7 out of every one hundred thousand African-American males ages fifteen to twenty-four were victims of homicide, down from a high of 137.1 per one hundred thousand in 1990 (National Vital Statistics Reports, vol. 52, no. 9, November 7, 2003).

Trends in Gang Homicides

The number of youth gang homicides declined in the 1990s, but the trends varied by city and also varied between the early and later parts of the decade, according to the OJJDP report "Youth Gang Homicides in the 1990s" (March 2001). From 1990 to 1996 the total number of homicides decreased by 256 (almost 15%) in the 408 cities surveyed, from 1,748 to 1,492 incidents.

Although the total number of gang-related homicides was down even further in 2002 (1,232), 91 out of 142 cities reported at least one gang-related homicide. Los Angeles and Chicago reported more gang-related homicides (655) than the other 89 cities combined (577). In those two cities approximately half the homicides were gang-related.

GUNS AND VIOLENCE

Schools, neighborhoods, and even private homes can be dangerous places for children and adolescents. Knives, handguns, and shotguns turn up in searches of school lockers. News reports describe incidents of children being shot on playgrounds or of youths firing rifles as they cruise the streets in cars. M. H. Swahn et al., in "Prevalence of Youth Access to Alcohol or a Gun in the Home" (Injury Prevention, 2002), found that nearly one-quarter (24.3%) of adolescents ages twelve to eighteen have easy access to a gun in their homes.

From 1983 to 1994 gun homicides by juveniles tripled, while homicides involving other types of weapons decreased. (See Figure 8.9.) Between 1994 and 1997, however, gun homicides by young people declined sharply, back to approximately 1989 levels.

FIGURE 8.9

Young Homicide Victims

In 2002, 1,357 youths under age eighteen were murdered—9.7% of all homicides that year. (See Table 8.5.) A slightly higher percentage of young victims were white (50.8%) than African-American (45%). Almost two-thirds of the young victims (63.9%) were male and one-third (36%) were female. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Injury Fact Book 2001–2002), in 1998 82% of homicide victims under age eighteen were killed with guns.

Firearm Deaths among Children and Youth

The teen death rate for firearm-related injuries more than doubled between 1970 and 1995 before beginning to decline. During those peak years, the overwhelming majority of deaths among young African-American males were firearm-associated, and American teenage boys were more likely to die from gunshot wounds than from all natural causes combined. In 2001 more than one out of every five deaths among all fifteen- to twenty-four-year-olds and half of all deaths among African-American males fifteen to twenty-four were caused by firearms.

Carrying a Weapon

The 2003 Youth Risk Behavior Survey reported that 17.1% of all students in grades nine through twelve claimed to have carried a weapon at least once within the previous thirty days, and 6.1% had carried a gun. (See Table 8.6.) Males were significantly more likely to carry a

TABLE 8.5

weapon (26.9%) than females (6.7%), and males were even more likely than females to carry a gun (10.2% and 1.6%, respectively). Non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic African-American, and Hispanic students were equally likely to carry a weapon.

Tracing "Crime Guns"

Rising rates of violent crime involving the use of firearms in the late 1980s and early 1990s led the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to initiate the Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative in 1996. In 2000 law enforcement agencies in the forty-four large cities that participated in the program submitted 88,570 trace requests on "crime guns" to the ATF's National Tracing Center. Firearms were traced to the point of original sale as one component of the national effort to reduce youth violence involving firearms.

In 2002 the ATF announced the results of these year-2000 traces (Crime Gun Trace Reports 2000 National Report, July 2002). More than 18,000 crime guns (20%) had been confiscated from youths ages eighteen to twenty-four, the peak years of age for being a crime gun possessor. Juveniles made up 8% of crime gun possessors (4,112 guns). Six of every ten handguns confiscated from youths and juveniles were semiautomatic pistols, slightly higher than the five of every ten confiscated from adults. Most of the crime guns had been obtained from firearm traffickers, who illegally sell new, used, or stolen weapons. The serial numbers had been obliterated from most of the traced guns, indicating that someone in the chain of possession assumed that the gun would be used for a crime. The ATF investigation revealed that nearly a third of the crime guns had entered the retail market between December 1996 and December 1997. This short "time to crime" indicated the ease with which a criminal could "fence" (sell a stolen item to a third party) a gun and the pervasiveness of the illegal firearms market.

Weapons Offenses

Weapons offenses are violations of local, state, and/or federal statutes or regulations that control deadly weapons. Deadly weapons include firearms and their ammunition, silencers, explosives, and certain knives. Between 1985 and 1993 the juvenile arrest rate for weapon offenses more than doubled, from about ninety per one hundred thousand juveniles to about 225 per one hundred thousand. After the peak in 1993, however, the rate of arrests declined sharply to about 1985 levels by 2000. (See Figure 8.10.)

Teenage males arrested for weapons offenses in 1980, 1990, 2000, and 2001 far outnumbered females arrested. (See Table 8.2 and Table 8.3.) However, between 1980 and 2001 the arrest rate for weapons offenses increased two-and-a-half times for females age ten to seventeen, from 10.6 to 25.4 arrests per one hundred thousand; at the same time the rate for males only increased from 169.8 to 197.7 arrests per one hundred thousand. (See Table 8.7.) In 1980 the rate for males was sixteen times that for females; in 2000 the rate for males was not quite eight times that for females.

Survey Results: Teens and Violence

The largest survey of teens ever undertaken in the United States, "Protecting Adolescents from Harm: Findings from the National Longitudinal Study on Adolescent Health" (Journal of the American Medical Association, vol. 278, no. 10, September 1997), was conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the University of Minnesota. The researchers questioned 90,000 students in grades seven through

TABLE 8.6

twelve at 145 schools around the country. They found that almost one-fourth of students surveyed had easy access to guns at home. Adolescents living in homes where guns were kept were more likely to behave violently and more likely to contemplate or attempt suicide.

Teens who said they had strong family ties were less likely to be involved in interpersonal violence than those who said they did not have close family ties. Older teens (ninth through twelfth grades) who had a parent present at breakfast, after school, at dinner, and at bedtime were also less likely to behave violently.

More than 10% of males and 5% of females interviewed said they had committed a violent act in the previous year. These acts included participating in fights, injuring someone, threatening someone with a weapon, using a weapon in a fight, or shooting or stabbing someone.

Younger teens (seventh and eighth graders) more often reported having been involved in violent activities than older teens. Urban teens, teens whose families received welfare, and Native American teens seemed more likely than others to have been involved in violence. About one in eight students said that they had brought a weapon to school in the month prior to being surveyed.

VICTIMIZATION OF JUVENILES

Teenagers and young adults—especially African-Americans—are the most likely groups to become victims of violent crime. In 2002 the rate of serious violent crime ranged from a high of more than 58.2 per one thousand

FIGURE 8.10

persons ages sixteen to nineteen to a low of 3.4 per one thousand persons age sixty-five or older (Callie Marie Rennison and Michael R. Rand, "Table 6. Rates of Violent Crime and Personal Theft, by Gender, Age, Race, and Hispanic Origin, 2002," in "Criminal Victimization, 2002," National Crime Victimization Survey, NCJ 199994, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justic Statistics, Washington, DC, August 2003).

JAMES ALAN FOX EXAMINES TRENDS IN JUVENILE VIOLENCE

Juvenile Violent Crime Rate Jumps in the Late 1980s to Mid-1990s

The late 1980s to 1994 saw a tremendous rise in violent crimes committed by juveniles and in the homicide victimization of teens and young adults. In 1996 James Alan Fox, Ph.D., of Northeastern University wrote in Trends in Juvenile Violence: A Report to the United States Attorney General on Current and Future Rates of Juvenile Offending (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Washington, DC) that there were two violent crime trends ongoing in America—one for the young and one for the mature. These trends, Fox theorized, were moving in opposite directions.

For example, between 1990 and 1994, the rate of homicide committed by adults age twenty-five and older declined 18% as the baby boomers matured into their middle-age years. At the same time, however, the homicide rate among teens ages fourteen to seventeen increased

TABLE 8.7

22% at a time when the population in this age group was declining. Between 1985 and 1994 the rate of homicide committed by teenagers aged fourteen to seventeen years increased 172%. For African-American males the rate of increase was 261 percent. In 1994 African-American males ages fourteen to twenty-four made up slightly more than 1% of the population yet were 17% of the victims of homicide and 30% of the perpetrators of homicide.

Fox also found a rise in the number of killings among family and friends. Guns, he reasoned, made it easy for juveniles to have deadly disputes over small matters such as a pair of athletic shoes or a dirty look. Also, he stated that while the negative impact of drugs, guns, and gang culture became more threatening, the positive socializing forces of family, school, religion, and neighborhood became weaker. The problem of unsupervised youth was reflected in the time-of-day patterns of juvenile violence. The prime time for juvenile crime was during the after-school hours.

Dire Predictions in 1996

Fox concluded that too many teenagers, particularly teens in urban areas, were plagued with idleness and even hopelessness. A growing number of teens and preteens saw few feasible or attractive alternatives to violence, drug use, and gang membership. Fox believed that this generation of youth had more dangerous drugs in their bodies, more deadly weapons in their hands, and a seemingly more casual attitude toward violence than previous generations. He predicted in his 1996 report that youth violence would worsen because by the year 2005 the number of teens ages fourteen to seventeen was predicted to be 20% higher than the 1994 level.

Facing the Future—The Rise of Teen Drug Abuse and Teen Violence (Committee on the Judiciary and International Narcotics Control Caucus, Washington, DC, 1995) also warned, "Not only are we facing a rise in violent crime by children, but we are also facing a rising number of children. The combination adds up to expectations that our nation will face an unprecedented number of crimes committed by juveniles."

Predictions Revised in the Face of a Decline in Juvenile Crime

The ominous predictions Fox made in 1996 did not come true. According to the FBI, the juvenile arrest rate for murder fell 74% between 1993 and 2000. Fox wrote two follow-ups to his 1996 report. In Trends in Juvenile Violence: 1997 Update, Fox warned that teen violence had not disappeared—the rates of homicide had fallen but remained at levels twice as high as in the 1980s. In Homicide Trends in the United States: 2000 Update, Fox and his colleagues wrote that teen homicide rates had fallen to levels not seen since the late 1960s, "reversing one of the most dramatic trends in homicide victimization."