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CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS ROOM |
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| www.cjcj.org |
| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 1622 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
Its lowest level in decades, that crime, violence and homicides are all declining sharply in schools, and that today's youth are better behaved in a whole host of ways than youth of the ''baby-boom'' generation.
The most recent FBI report on youth violence showed a sharp 68 percent reduction in youth homicides since their peak in 1993. Homicides by youth are now at their lowest level since 1966. Homicides by children 12 and under were at their lowest level since the FBI began tracking homicides by preteens in 1964. In 1998, the last year in which Census Bureau polling data on youth crime is available, youth crime was at its lowest rate in the 25-year history of the Census Bureau's crime survey.
Crime in schools has been fairly closely tracking youth crime in general. For example, school crime declined by 29 percent between 1993 and 1997, mirroring the 30 percent decline in overall youth crime during roughly the same period.
According to data released by the Justice Department and National Center for Education Statistics, the number of serious violent crimes in schools declined by 34 percent during that period and students carrying weapons to schools declined by 30 percent.
The National School Safety Center publishes data every year on school-associated violent deaths. The first year it began recording this data was in the 1992-93 school year, a year in which there were 55 school-associated violent deaths. In the 1998-99 school year, there were 30 school-associated violent deaths, half of which were accounted for by Columbine. That's a 45 percent decline since 1992. Last year, there were 16 school-associated violent deaths, a 71 percent decline since 1992.
While there is no acceptable level of killing in schools, in a school population of 52 million students, 16 school-associated violent deaths works out to a less than one-in-3-million chance of being killed in one of America's schools. By comparison, approximately 16 children die at the hands of their parents or guardians every three days in America. Ninety-nine percent of the time that a young person is killed in America, it is outside of a school.
It is data like this that led the Bi-Partisan Working Group on Youth Violence of the 106th Congress to write, ''There are many misconceptions about the prevalence of youth violence in our society and it is important to peel back the veneer of hot-tempered discourse that often surrounds the issue. In the case of youth violence, it is important to note that, statistically speaking, schools are among the safest places for children to be.''
Despite the fact that youth crime is at the lowest rate in decades, 62 percent of the public believes that youth crime is on the increase. Despite there being a one-in-3-million chance of being killed in one of America's schools, 71 percent of respondents to a Wall Street Journal poll felt that such a shooting was likely in their school.
On this one, Congress is right. It is no fairer to stereotype America's 52 million students as assassins than it is to taint all adults with the sins of Timothy McVeigh. Our kids are good kids, the kids on the other side of the yellow tape, weeping over the death of their classmates. As we set public policy from the White House, to the statehouse, to the schoolhouse, that is an important lesson for us to remember. Vincent Schiraldi is president of the Justice Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research and public policy organization in Washington, D.C.
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