Youth Homicide: Keeping Perspective on How Many Children Kill

• NCJ Number: 192716
• Author(s): Eric Lotke
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 16 pages
• Sale Source: National Ctr on Institutions and Alternatives
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Part of a Symposium Issue on Youth Violence published in the Valparaiso Law Review, N 2, V 31, Spring 1997; downloaded January 24, 2002.

Annotation

This study examined how many children commit a homicide in the United States in the course of a year.

Abstract

Overall crime rates in America have been stable or slightly declining for most of the past 20 years. From 1972 to 1995, the percentage of overall index crimes -- serious crimes such as murder, robbery, and rape -- cleared by the arrest of a juvenile decreased from 27.3 percent to 22.2 percent. For violent index crimes only, there had been a slight increase from 13.2 to 14.1 percent; thus, trends in juvenile crime mirrored the overall trend of general stability and marginal declines. Furthermore, the vast majority of juvenile crime involved nonviolent offenses, primarily relating to property or drugs. Only 6 out of 100 juvenile arrests were for violent crimes (the same as adults). Among the small number of violent offenses, the majority were assaults, a flexible crime category that often involved mere threats or fights. Arrests for murder and rape constituted less than one-half of 1 percent of juvenile arrests. When the focus was narrowed to juvenile homicide, however, the picture shifted to genuine and shocking increases. Youth homicide arrest rates have doubled just since the late 1980's, with the increases sweeping across racial and ethnic lines. Most of the increase in juvenile homicides involved firearms. Still, these rapid increases in youth homicide were highly site specific and did not present the overall general threat to public safety that many people perceived. Eighty-two percent of the counties in America experienced no youth homicides in 1994; 92 percent experienced zero or one. Just four cities -- Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Detroit -- accounted for nearly one-third of the juvenile homicide arrests nationwide, even though they accounted for only one-twentieth of the country's juvenile population. Most States experience just a few homicides by juveniles in the course of a year; many States experience none at all, and large States experience just over a hundred. Further, the increases may be coming to an end; data for 1995 suggested that arrests of juveniles for homicide and other violent crimes started to decline. 52 notes