NCJ Number
203464
Date Published
December 2003
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This report considers whether violence, particularly gun violence, by young people in Washington, DC, represents a significant new trend and then analyzes the city’s response to such violence.
Abstract
Recent tragic events involving gun violence by youth in Washington, DC, has spurred city leaders to consider how to control what is being considered a new epidemic of youth violence in the city. The report contends that actions taken by Washington leaders are unlikely to lower youth violence and only succeeds in making it easier to move juvenile suspects into the adult criminal justice system. The author contends that policies that move juvenile offenders to the adult criminal justice system have little effect on public safety and may even increase the chance that youth will commit serious crimes in the future. The report reviews the national juvenile crime rate from 1994 to 2002 and then focuses on the juvenile arrest rate in 2003. A trend analysis reveals that the juvenile crime rate in Washington, DC, fell between 1990 and 2002, with fewer juvenile offenders referred to juvenile court. Moreover, the report notes that the juvenile crime trend and the adult crime trend in Washington, DC, are similar and that violent crime in Washington, DC, is overwhelmingly an adult problem. As such, the recent reaction of city leaders in Washington, DC, to youth violence is overly narrow and that the recent tragic incidences of violence do not yet indicate a trend toward increasing youth violence in the city. Moreover, even if a growing trend in youth violence is afoot, proposals by city leaders to send juvenile offenders to the adult criminal justice system would do little to effectively lower such violence. Figures, tables, endnotes