Kids - The Bad Seed

"By the early 1990's, rates of criminal violence, including youth violence, reached unparalleled levels in American society…. It might be helpful to conceptualize violence as an infectious disease spreading among the Nation's youth." — Kelley et al.

Are the young more violent now than they were 30 years ago? Apparently so, if we can go by the number of arrests of juveniles for violent crimes. The data on the graphed above and the table below are reported by law enforcement agencies to the FBI for the annual Uniform Crime Report (see Indexes of Crime and Violent Crime in Chapter 1). While we can be thankful that arrests for all types of violent crimes began to decline after peaking in 1994, over the nearly 30-year period shown, arrests for all violent crimes were up 49% (table). Aggravated assault showed the most dramatic increase (143%). Forcible rape was up 10%, and murder and robbery were down, 16% and 11% respectively.

Juvenile Arrests for Violent Crimes

	1970	1975	1980	1990	1994	1998	1999	Percent
Violent crime, total	54,860	76,131	77,220	97,103	125,141	90,201	81,715	+49%
Murder	1,350	1,373	1,475	2,661	3,114	1,587	1,131	-16%
Forcible rape	3,233	3,457	3,668	4,971	4,873	3,988	3,544	+10%
Robbery	29,363	39,388	38,529	34,944	47,046	29,989	26,125	-11%
Aggravated assault	20,914	31,913	33,548	54,527	70,108	54,637	50,915	+143%

When a child commits a violent act, it's headline news. According to Howell: "What brought the problem of violent juvenile offenders to the forefront of national attention was a doubling of the relatively small number of juvenile homicides from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s (due largely to the availability of firearms)." These homicides include highly publicized school shootings mentioned in the preceding panels.

What are we doing about violent crimes committed by children? We have reacted (over-reacted?) by turning our juvenile courts into adult criminal courts. Butts and Harrell of the Urban Policy Institute report: "According to a recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, two-thirds of Americans think juveniles under age 13 who commit murder should be tried as adults. " Vincent Schiraldi of the Justice Policy Institute complains: "Most Americans believe juvenile crime is an increasing threat, when it is actually lower than it's been for a generation.⁶ It is our fears of our children that are driving us to expel, handcuff and incarcerate a generation, not their behavior."

How does the juvenile population of today differ from that of 30 years ago? For one thing, more children live in poverty. In 1997 juveniles were 26% of the U.S. population but were 40% of all persons living below the poverty level (14.1 million children). Today's children are less likely to be living with both parents (about 3 in 10 children lived with only one parent in 1997, and more than half of black children lived in single-parent homes, most often with a woman at the head). When Comanor and Phillips examined data in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY),⁷ they found that of all the factors that increase the likelihood of a young man encountering the criminal justice system, the most important is having no father present in the home. The absence of a father outweighs even family income.

Juvenile crime rates may have declined in the 1990s, but concern is voiced that rates increased in rural areas, and offenders are getting younger. More girls are taking to violent crime as well. Our next panel looks at girls' contributions to violent crime arrests.

Sources: Chart: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1995, Table 323, and Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2001, Table 309. Primary source: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Crime in the United States, annual. Kelley, Barbara Tatem et al., "Epidemiology of Serious Violence," Juvenile Justice Bulletin, June 1997. Howell, James, "A New Approach to Juvenile Crime," Corrections Compendium, September 1998. Vincent Schiraldi, "Fear of teen crime based in ignorance, and vilifying kids doesn't help matters," Justice Policy Institute, http://www.appa-net.org/TeenCrime.html. Jeffrey A. Butts and Adele V. Harrell, "Delinquents or Criminals: Policy Options for Young Offenders," The Urban Institute, www.urban.org/crime/delinq.html. William S. Comanor and Llad Phillips, The Impact of Income and Family Structure on Delinquency, University of California, Santa Barbara February 10, 1998, www.econ.ucsb.edu/papers/FATHERHD.pdf. Information retrieved October 9, 2002.