CJCJ: Myths and Facts about Youth and Crime

Despite actual declines in youth crime over the past decade, the public�s perception of youth violence has reached all time heights.

Media blitzes surrounding school shootings and other violent, but rare, incidents have succeeded in scaring the public and creating a climate that supports tougher juvenile laws like curfews and trying kids in adult courts.

Juvenile Crime in the News
Three-quarters of the public say they form their opinions about crime from what they see or read in the news, while only 22% say they get their primary information on crime from personal experience.

There was less than a one in two million chance of being killed in a school in America in 1998-1999, yet 71% of Americans felt that a school shooting was likely in their community. According to an NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll

A study of three California newspapers showed that 25% of stories about youth involved violence, while only 3% of youth in the same year were involved in a violent crime. A study of California television news reported that two-thirds of violence stories included youth and more than half of youth stories involved violence, although youth only made up 14% of violence arrests in California.

The media rarely connect crimes to a larger social context and they disproportionately connect people of color as perpetrators of crime and white people as victims of crime.

In the past decade, Californians voted to support the building of larger correctional facilities and tougher crime legislation, like Proposition 21, because of a perception that today�s youth are more violent and are committing more crimes. The charts below show the actual trends in youth felony and misdemeanor arrests since 1991.

The following publications are all links on the [publications] page of cjcj:

School House Hype: The School Shootings, and the Real Risks Kids Face in America
July 1998 [Press Release] [View the Brief]

Dispelling the Myth: An Analysis of Youth and Adult Crime Patterns in California over the Past 20 Years
March 2000 [Press Release] [View the Brief]

Runaway Juvenile Crime?: The Context of Juvenile Crime Arrests
(Special release version just after the Jonesboro shootings)
March 1998 [Press Release] [View the Brief]

The Risks Juveniles Face When They Are Incarcerated With Adults
July 1997 [Press Release] [View the Brief]

From Classrooms to Cellblocks: A National Perspective
February 1997 [View the Brief]

Issue:
Americans and Californians believe today's youth are uniquely criminal, violent, and out of control.

Facts:
The trends shown in three decades of California crime reports are clear: today's children and teenagers are considerably less crime-prone, and today's middle-aged adults are far more so, than their counterparts of the past.

California crime rates generally have fallen over the last two decades. The reason is that declines in crime by youths and young adults under age 25 have offset large crime increases among adults age 30 and older.

Variations exist for different populations and time periods, but the larger trend is clear: a high school youth of the 1970s was four times more likely to be arrested for a felony than a 40-year-old parent, but the rate of high schooler offending has fallen so rapidly, and that of midlife adults has risen so sharply, that by the late 1990s Junior and Parent had equal odds of felony arrest.

Nationally as well, teenagers show either the larger declines or smaller increases (depending on crime category) in rates of serious offending compared to adults.

Most promising of all, the youngest teens and children show the largest declines in crime of any age group, foretelling a law abiding coming generation.

Youth crime is strongly related to socioeconomic status. Among California's White youth, crime of all types (including homicide) has declined strongly and steadily, by 20% to 50%, over the last 25 years. Black, Latino, and Asian youth show cyclical patterns (including a sharp increase followed by a sharp decline in homicide and violent crime in the late 1980s and 1990s) but generally display considerably lower rates of serious crime than a quarter-century ago.

The sharp rise in adult crime remains a mystery. Among adults age 30 and older, felony crime rates have doubled and felony arrests have quadrupled in the last quarter century, reaching a staggering 250,000 arrests in 1998.

The rise is not related to social class. In fact, White adults 30 and older show the largest increase in felony arrest and imprisonment of any racial or age group.

The surge in violent, property, and other felony arrests of over-30 adults appears to be tied to increased drug abuse among aging Baby Boomers and, for violent crime, to increased enforcement of domestic violence laws.

Arrest trends are confirmed by prison trends. Rates of imprisonment of California adults 30 and older (particularly Whites) have been skyrocketing. As a result, California will spend $2-3 billion to imprison just the 37,500 new inmates age 30 and older admitted to prison in 1998 (a 42% increase over 1997's 26,400) -- as much as the state spends on the entire University System.

At least as surprising as the trends themselves is fact that they have gone unrecognized for more than a decade. Data from state crime reports directly contradict the public image created by numerous authorities, politicians, leading institutions, and the news media of a law-abiding adult generation saddled with inexplicably violent, wayward youth. As a result, California's fixation on a supposed "youth crime epidemic" that never materialized has left the state unprepared to confront the real crime problem: tens of thousands of aging offenders and prison inmates, most with neglected drug problems and many in declining health, whose incarceration, treatment, and medical costs represent a fiscal time bomb of enormous proportions as well as severe damage to families and communities. California desperately needs to remove politics from the tainting the basic information used to make criminal justice decisions.

Sources:
California Criminal Justice Statistics Center: Crime & Delinquency in California, 1975-98; California Criminal Justice Profiles, Statewide, 1978-98. Sacramento: California Department of Justice. FBI: Uniform Crime Reports for the United States, 1964-98, Tables 28, 33. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice.

Issue:
Authorities, politicians, and the news media claim that school shootings, gang killings, and other barbaric crimes show that today's teenagers are more violent, murderous, and deadly with guns than ever before.

Facts:
From 1985 to the early 1990s, the number of teenagers arrested for murder nearly tripled before declining sharply in the mid- and late 1990s. By failing to point out key facts, authorities have seriously misrepresented this trend as showing today's generation is uniquely prone to slaughter.

Media and politician depictions to the contrary, juveniles account for only a tiny proportion of murders. In the peak year, 1994, the FBI reported that persons under age 18 committed only 10.2% of all murders. In 1998, juveniles accounted for only 6.3% of the nation's homicides.

Homicide is an extremely rare crime in no way evidencing the violence or criminality of an entire generation. In 1994, 3,900 youths under age 18 were arrested for murder, representing 1/80th of 1% of those age 10-17 (the age group law enforcement uses for "youth"), 1/6th of 1% of those arrested for any crime, and 4/10ths of 1% of those arrested for any serious crime.

Homicide arrests drastically overstate the juvenile murder rate. In 1998, for example, the FBI reported that youths accounted for 12% of all murder arrests but only 6.3% of all murders. This is because of a completely unreported fact uncovered in a 1997 study which tracked all 2,947 juveniles arrested for homicide in 1992 found only 1,330 (45%) were convicted of murder, and only 410 (14%) were convicted of killing a stranger -- the offense cited as proof of cold-bloodedness.

In California, homicide rose only among impoverished black, Latino, and Asian youth. State crime statistics clearly show murder rates among white youth declined by 40% from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s.

The cause of the increase in homicide among nonwhite youth was gang conflict, particularly over crack cocaine markets, in jobless inner cities and decaying older suburbs. Meanwhile, California's middle-class and more affluent communities have never been safer.

The claim that "violence is everywhere," affecting wealthy suburb, rural area, and inner city alike, is absolutely false. This hoax has been constructed by leading crime authorities and the news media, which have juxtaposed the statistics of an increase in murder by inner-city youths with unrelated, sensational anecdotes of rare murders (such as school shootings) by white, suburban youth.

School shootings are alarming but far from widespread. Of 25 million teenagers in 20,000 secondary schools nationwide, 10 youths in eight schools perpetrated the school killings over the last three years. By contrast, middle-aged men murdered more people in similar mass shootings in a few months of summer and fall 1999 in offices, community centers, homes, and churches than school shooters did in three years.

Three-fourths of all murders of youths are by adults, not by peers. A school aged youth is a dozen times safer from being murdered at school than at home.

During the 1990s, the murder rate among black youth is 12 times higher, and among Latino youth 5 times higher, than among white youth. California white teenagers have murder rates lower than for white adults or black or Latino senior citizens, comparable to those of Canadian teens.

The reason for the huge discrepancy is not race but socioeconomics. In counties such as Fresno, where poverty among white youths is three times higher than among white youths in Ventura County, murder and violent crime rates among white youths are much higher as well.

The high homicide rate among nonwhite youth is a direct result of industrial abandonment and joblessness, forcing young people into more dangerous alternatives such as gangs. Where youths (regardless of race) have the same socioeconomic status as adults, youths display murder and other crime rates lower than those of adults.

The claim that children are murdering at younger ages is absolutely false. Nationally, the homicide arrest rate among children under age 13 is at its lowest point today in at least 30 years, 40% lower than in the 1970s and 25% lower than in the 1960s. In California, the last three years (1996-98) are the lowest for murders by children under age 13 than for any comparable three-year period extending back to the first crime reports in the 1970s.

Gun fatality rates among youths reflect only two factors: (a) gun fatality rates among adults around them, and (b) poverty. Among California white youth, gun death rates are low and declining. Among nonwhite youths, gun deaths rose sharply in the early 1990s to peaks 10 to 20 times higher than for white youths.

Gun violence is not "everywhere." Fewer than 10% of California's zip codes account for five-sixths of its teenage homicides and gun fatalities. Four-fifths of zipcodes had none. Guns are not the teen "fight finishers" of the 1990s any more than 30 years ago.

Sources:
California Criminal Justice Statistics Center: Crime & Delinquency in California, 1975-98; California Criminal Justice Profiles, Statewide, 1978-98. Sacramento: California Department of Justice. Center for Health Statistics: California Mortality Detail File 1968-97, Microcomputer Injury Surveillance System (MISS), 1985-98. Sacramento: Department of Health Services. FBI: Uniform Crime Reports for the United States, 1964-98, Tables 28, 33. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice.

Issue:
Driven by the belief that today's youths are out of control, Americans are saddling teenagers with sweeping curfews, driving restrictions, "zero tolerance" crackdowns, and calls for even more intrusive adult surveillance of adolescents' free time. No other Western society imposes such drastic curbs on young people.

Facts:
Today's youth are not "out of control." While the media and authorities wrongly declare rare cases of individual youths gone wrong as symptoms of general malaise, the larger truth is that today's is the best-behaved younger generation in decades. It is adults, particularly those over age 30, who display skyrocketing rates of serious crime, drug and alcohol abuse, and family disarray.

Over the last 20 to 30 years, California youth show dramatically lower rates of suicide, violent death, traffic fatalities, serious crime, drunken driving, and drug and alcohol abuse. They show higher rates of school graduation, college attendance, employment, community volunteerism, and optimistic attitude. These improvements began long before the 1990s campaigns to "get tough," arrest, treat, or program young people.

In fact, "get tough" controls may interfere with ongoing improvements. Two examples are youth curfews and California's new teen driving restrictions.

Daytime and nighttime curfews as proposed by the White House are so stringent they would ban youths from being in public all but a couple of hours most days of the year. Curfews have been adopted in dozens of California cities and hundreds nationwide.

In 1997, [CJCJ undertook a massive study of the effects of curfews] on crime in general, youth crime, youth crime compared to adult crime, and youthful violent death rates over time (1980 through 1997), by major county, for 21 cities of 100,000 or more in Los Angeles and Orange counties, and in three specific case studies: the cities of Monrovia and San Jose, California, and Vernon, Connecticut.

The results of the larger analysis were unequivocal: curfews cannot be shown to reduce crime, youth crime, or youthful violent death over time or by locale. Cities without curfews showed the same patterns as cities that enforced curfews vigorously and made hundreds of arrests every year.

The results of the case studies were disturbing: curfews may actually increase crime and reduce youth safety by occupying police time removing law-abiding youths from public, leaving emptier streets and public places which urban planning experts such as William Whyte and Jane Jacobs argue are conducive to crime.

After imposing its schoolday curfew in October 1994, Monrovia displayed no greater declines in crime than its 11 neighboring cities which enforced curfews much less or not at all. Further, the crime showing the biggest decline in Monrovia -- aggravated assault -- is the one youths are least likely to commit.

More surprising, police figures showed that Monrovia's crime rate declined much faster in the summer months (-43% from 1994 to 1997) and school-year nights and weekends (down 34%) when the curfew was not enforced than during the school day periods when the curfew was enforced (-29%).

A similar pattern was found for San Jose. Compared to San Francisco (which abolished its youth curfew in the early 1990s), San Jose (which began vigorously enforcing a curfew in the mid-1990s) showed poorer results for every crime category. While San Jose was the state's only major city to show an increase in violent crime in the mid-1990s, San Francisco led the state (and most of the nation) in declines in rates of violent crime, juvenile homicide arrest, and juvenile violent death.

Our analysis of 400 individual curfew citations issued by Vernon, Connecticut, police showed why curfews are harmful. Police reported virtually no instances of criminal activity, intoxication, or other misbehavior or endangerment among the youths they cited for curfew. Thus, the effect was to remove law-abiding youths from the streets. Vernon showed a lesser decline in crime than comparable cities without curfews.

Another youth control gone wrong is California's new teen driving law, which restricted drivers under age 18 from driving alone, with friends, or at certain times unless accompanied by a parent or other driver age 25 or older. Proponents of the law claimed teens were in greater peril today and needed tougher supervision.

Both of these claims were wrong. Highway Patrol figures showed that in the decade before the law took effect (July 1, 1998), California's 16 year-old drivers had shown dramatic declines in rates of serious traffic crashes (down 30%), particularly fatal ones (down 40%). In 1997, 16 year-olds were 60% safer drivers than they were in 1977.

In the year after the new law took effect, traffic fatalities jumped 38% (the largest annual increase ever) and other serious crashes showed no improvement among the 16 year-old drivers most affected by the law.

Conclusion: When youths and parents are allowed to make decisions on an individual basis about when teenagers can be in public and when, where, and with whom they can associate and drive, both young people and society are safer than when teens are banished from public and from driving by sweeping, one-size-fits-all edicts.

Sources:
Males M, Macallair D (1998). The Effect of Juvenile Curfew Laws in California. Western Criminology Review, 1:1, Winter 1998-99. California Highway Patrol: Annual Report of Fatal and Injury Traffic Collisions, 1975-98. Sacramento: California Department of Justice.

Issue:
More youth offenders are being tried in adult criminal court for serious offenses. Proponents of transferring youths from juvenile to adult court argue that getting tough on young offenders is necessary to protect society and is race-neutral in application.

Facts:
The Building Blocks for Youth Initiative's [Color of Justice] study, the first analysis of racial/ethnic disparity in transfers of youths to adult court in California, found imbalances that are stark and vast:

Nonwhite youths are 8.2 times more likely than White youths to be sentenced by an adult court to imprisonment in a California Youth Authority facility (Figure 1). Two factors contribute in roughly equal measure to this discrepancy:

First, Nonwhite youths are 2.7 times more likely than White youths to be arrested for a violent felony (the crimes most likely to result in transfer to adult court).

Second, once in the system, Nonwhite juvenile violent crime arrestees are 3.1 times more likely than White juvenile violent crime arrestees to be transferred to adult court and sentenced to confinement in a CYA prison.

Even under the debatable hypothesis that the surplus of Nonwhite youth arrests entirely reflects differentials in violent crime by race rather than some degree of greater policing and harsher charging policies, the discriminatory treatment of Nonwhite youth arrestees accumulates within the justice system -- and accelerates measurably if the youth is transferred to adult court.

Our limited analysis of Los Angeles County data reveal that the major factor in the large racial disparities in sentencing lies in the much more frequent transfer of Nonwhite juveniles to adult court. The more complete, statewide analysis shows the outcomes of those transfers is unusually harsh sentencings of Nonwhite offenders by adult courts statewide.

The reasons for these disparities are not clear; they do not appear to result from more heinous offenses by Nonwhite youths, although the possibility of systematic differences in prior criminal records cannot be evaluated from available information. Even when the most conservative and clearly limited index is used (each race's respective contribution to California's juvenile homicide volume), Nonwhite offenders remain 1.4 times more likely to be sentenced to CYA confinement by adult courts than are similarly offending White youth.

Given the current analysis and previous studies showing similar racial discrepancies in other areas of the criminal justice system, future research must begin examining the basis for the large adultcourt (and the lesser juvenile-court) disparities in sentencing this study found. In 1980, White youth comprised 30% of the CYA population; in 1998, 14%. Hispanic youth have risen from 30% to 49% over the same period. The CYA projects that Hispanic youth will represent 65% of the CYA population within the next several years.

Clearly, if the current trends towards a harsher and more severe criminal justice system continues, Nonwhite youth will be affected in accelerating fashion. As more Nonwhite youths are absorbed into the criminal justice system, fewer will be prepared to enter mainstream society or the labor market. This growing disenfranchisement of Nonwhite youths will exacerbate current social, economic, and political polarization even during favorable economic periods. Increased polarization between racial and ethnic groups undermines democratic institutions and further promotes the development of an ever increasing police presence within Nonwhite communities.

Although statistical assessments are limited in their ability to analyze underlying, less quantitative or tangible reasons for these disparities, the current analysis raises troubling issues. Future research needs to examine the underlying reasons for and solutions to resolve racial disparities.

Sources:
Building Blocks for Youth: The Color of Justice [http://www.buildingblocksforyouth.org/colorofjustice/], January 2000. California Criminal Justice Statistics Center: Crime & Delinquency in California, 1975-98; California Criminal Justice Profiles, Statewide, 1978-98. Sacramento: California Department of Justice. Center for Health Statistics: California Mortality Detail File 1968-97, Microcomputer Injury Surveillance System (MISS), 1985-98. Sacramento: Department of Health Services.