Is youth violence on the upswing?

To follow is an excerpt from the CQ Researcher issue on "Youth Violence" by Thomas J. Billitteri, March 5, 2010:

To read the news in recent months it would be easy to think the nation is in the grip of a new youth crime wave. In Patchogue, on Long Island, seven teens were charged in a fatal assault on an Ecuadorian immigrant, and prosecutors alleged a pattern of teen violence against Hispanics in the area. [Footnote 15] In Texas, two young men, 19 and 21, were charged with a church fire, and authorities said they may face charges in nine others. [Footnote 16]

But Barry Krisberg, former president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency and now a distinguished senior fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, law school, says youth crime “is way down from the peak in the middle 1990s.” Since then, he adds, “it leveled off a little bit, and the latest numbers suggest it's down again. There's hardly a surge of it at any level.”

In testimony last year to a congressional hearing, Krisberg said much of the public's perception of rising youth crime is based on the way news outlets report on crime.

A study conducted in Dallas, Washington, D.C., and San Mateo County, Calif., found that the media consistently reported increases in juvenile crime — if they were short-term increases — but not crime decreases, he said. In addition, Krisberg said, the media consistently attributed most of the violence problems to youth whereas most violence was committed by young adults. And, he said, the media often failed to offer context: “They don't do a good job of answering the ‘why’ questions.” [Footnote 17]

The relentless airing of incidents over the Internet has only heightened the public's view that youth crime is surging.

Still, in some cities, and in some neighborhoods, perception and reality can be one.

“These [aggregate crime] data are numbers from all over the country put into a blender, and in some communities the levels are very low, and in other communities they are crazy high,” says Melissa Sickmund, chief of systems research at the National Center for Juvenile Justice. “You can't go into a community that's experiencing a real problem in their world, on their streets, with their kids ending up dead or their kids ending up behind bars because they committed these crimes, and tell them nationally stuff is down, it's not a problem.”

In Pittsburgh, an informal survey of students ages 9 to 18 in urban neighborhoods found that almost 80 percent have had family members or friends wounded or killed by gun violence. [Footnote 18] In South Philadelphia, parents, teachers and activists testified recently at a public hearing on school violence in the wake of several highly publicized incidents, including the fatal shooting of a high school football star.[Footnote 19]

Jeffrey Butts, a criminologist who this spring will become executive director of the Criminal Justice Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, points out that while aggregate youth crime has not been going up nationally, it can seem that way. Crime, he says, is “very local,” meaning crime rates may vary among neighborhoods a few blocks from each other.

“If you're living in a poor, disadvantaged neighborhood with no infrastructure and lots of gang activity, it can seem that [crime] has gotten lots worse in the last couple of years,” he says. Criminologists are only now developing reliable techniques to measure crime trends at the neighborhood level, he says.

Butts says violent youth crime generally has been fluctuating in a narrow range near what may turn out to be the bottom of a trough formed over the last dozen or so years. While youth crime is “not going up” he says, “I can't imagine it will go down a whole lot more, especially given what's going on in the economy.”

Whatever the direction of overall trends, youth violence continues to plague pockets of many big cities, with minorities often the heaviest victims. “There remains an extraordinary and unconscionable persistent problem of extremely high violent criminal victimization,” says Kennedy of John Jay College. “This is peer-on-peer stuff…. It's extremely densely concentrated among young black men in particular neighborhoods.”

The crime is typically perpetrated by what Kennedy calls “a very small population of high-rate offenders involved in high-rate-offending groups like gangs, drug crews, neighborhood sets, and so on…. Most of the serious violent crime in these communities is perpetrated by members of these standout groups.”

In Cincinnati, where an Operation Ceasefire program is under way, “there are about 60 of these identifiable offending groups, and they have a totality of about 1,500 people in them,” Kennedy says. “They are associated — as victims, offenders or both — with 75 percent of all the killings in Cincinnati. Those identified by name — and therefore open to criminal-history background checks — average 35 prior charges apiece.” Still, Kennedy points out, those 1,500 and all the groups associated with the killings represent a tiny fraction of the metro area's overall population.

Fox, the Northeastern University criminologist, says that in updating his study on homicides and gun killings among black youth, he found an improvement in the latest data, for 2008. Still, he says, “I don't think it changes the overall argument and overall findings that this plummeting crime rate we've been seeing in this country is not across the board and that we still have rates among certain segments, particularly young black males, that remain elevated.

“These things can vacillate from year to year. Unless we see these numbers go down for several more years, I'm still very concerned about what's happening among some Americans in some cities. And I'm concerned that there's very little attention paid toward it because overall things are better.”

The Issues

• Is youth violence on the upswing?
• Are minority youths singled out for arrest and detention?
• Are “get tough” policies the best approach for fighting youth crime?

For more information see the CQ Researcher report on "Youth Violence" [subscription required] or purchase the CQ Researcher PDF.

Footnotes:
[15] Anne Barnard, “Youth Charged With More Attacks on Latinos,” The New York Times, Jan. 29, 2009, www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/nyregion/29patchogue.html.

[16] Derrick Henry, “2 Men Charged in Texas Church Fire,” The New York Times, Feb. 21, 2010, www.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/us/22webchurch.html?ref=us.

[17] Testimony before House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security, Feb. 11, 2009, http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/hear_090211.html.

[18] Sally Kalson, “Survey finds gun violence affects youth,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan. 20, 2010, www.post-gazette.com/pg/10020/1029497-53.stm. The written survey of 455 students was a project of the Metro-Urban Institute of the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and several other organizations.

[19] Dafney Tales, “Violence has students attending in fear,” Philadelphia Daily News, Jan. 29, 2010.

The New Report: Juvenile Justice

By Peter Katel, November 7, 2008

Are sentencing policies too harsh?

As many as 200,000 youths charged with crimes today are tried in adult courts, where judges tend to be tougher and punishments harsher -- including sentencing to adult prisons. But with juvenile crime now on the decline, youth advocates are seizing the moment to push for major changes in iron-fisted juvenile justice systems nationwide. Above all, they want to roll back harsh state punishments -- triggered by the crack cocaine-fueled crime wave of the late 1980s and early ‘90s -- that sent thousands of adolescents to adult courts and prisons. Many prosecutors say the get-tough approach offers society the best protection. But critics say young people often leave prison more bitter and dangerous than when they went in. Moreover, recent brain studies show weak impulse control in young people under age 18, prompting some states to reconsider their tough punishments. Prosecutors respond that even immature adolescents know right from wrong.

* Should states roll back their tough juvenile crime laws?
* Did tough laws lower crime rates?
* Does the prospect of facing the adult court system deter juveniles from crime?

To read the Overview of this week's report, click here.

To read the entire CQ Researcher Online report, click here. [subscription required]

To buy a PDF of this report, click here.

Overview of the New Report on Juvenile Justice

Washington, D.C., lawyer Matthew Caspari has developed some strong feelings about punishing teenage criminals since last August. That’s when he wrestled with a knife-wielding 17-year-old who’d been harassing one of his neighbors on Capitol Hill.

Caspari had been taking a walk with his wife and their 6-month-old daughter when he saw a neighbor in trouble. As he was calling 911, the young man threatened him, and they began to fight. When Caspari’s dropped cell phone picked up his wife’s screams, police raced to the scene and arrested the man.

But what happened afterwards was equally disturbing, Caspari told a City Council hearing in October. After a Family Court judge released the youth while he awaited sentencing, he was back on the street hanging out with a tough crowd, Caspari said. That’s why he said he opposed legislation to rescind the U.S. attorney’s sole power to try teenagers 15 and older in adult court for violent crimes.

“Family Court is no deterrent,” said Caspari. “Punishment and consequences are simply not taken seriously by the offenders. If you want to instill a sense of accountability in these teens and provide therapy and services -- there’s no reason why you can’t provide that in the adult system -- while protecting the community.”

Democratic Councilman Phil Mendelson, who is co-sponsoring the proposal to reign in the U.S. attorney, says statistical evidence shows adult-court prosecution tends to reinforce -- rather than diminish -- young offenders’ criminal tendencies.

“The inclination is, if somebody commits a crime, particularly a violent crime, then lock ‘em up,” Mendelson told the hearing. “And the research shows that is statistically counterproductive.”

Mendelson’s comment echoed the views of a growing number of juvenile justice experts and activists. With violent juvenile crime trending downward for the past 13 years, they say it’s time to replace the tough sentences that state lawmakers enacted in the 1980s and ‘90s and handle more youth cases in juvenile court. The hard-line policies reflected skyrocketing juvenile crime and the prediction -- later proved baseless -- that violent, young “superpredators” would take over the nation’s inner cities.

The get-tough measures eased the transferring of juveniles to adult courts where they faced tougher sentences. Some states allowed prosecutors to “direct file” juvenile cases in adult court; others left the decision to a judge, or made transfers automatic for certain charges.

But standards differ on when courts legally recognize that adulthood begins. In most states -- especially those striving for more rehabilitation -- 18 is the threshold age. In 10 states -- Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin -- teens become adults at 17; in New York and North Carolina, it’s 16.

Experts say they haven’t determined how many convicts are serving time for crimes committed before they were 18. But the Campaign for Youth Justice, a Washington-based advocacy group, estimates that on any given day 7,500 youths under 18 are in jail or awaiting trial or transport to prison or juvenile detention.

Adult court sentences often are tougher than those in juvenile courts. Until 2005, they could include the death penalty, which the U.S. Supreme Court then banned for anyone who committed a capital crime before turning 18.

The backdrop to that decision was a decline in youth crime, and the drop continues. According to the most recent statistics, the 2007 arrest rate for youths ages 10-18 was down to fewer than 300 per 100,000 -- the same level as in 1982.

To counter assertions by prosecutors that tougher laws brought crime rates down, opponents of harsh penalties point to studies showing that juveniles tried as adults come out of prison more dangerous than when they went in, and hence more prone to become adult criminals. A nationwide Task Force on Community Preventive Services, appointed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, concluded in late 2006: “Overall, available evidence indicates that use of transfer laws and strengthened transfer policies is counterproductive for the purpose of reducing juvenile violence and enhancing public safety.”

Indeed, at a recent conference on juvenile rehabilitation at the Brookings Institution, Bart Lubow, director of programs for high-risk youth at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, said the punitive laws of the 1980s and ‘90s had “resulted in the criminalization of delinquency.” The Baltimore-based nonprofit is advising 100 cities and counties on how to reorganize their juvenile systems so that they rely less on incarceration.

Many prosecutors say they also want to channel more juveniles into detention alternatives -- but not all of them.

In Oregon, says Clatsop County District Attorney Joshua Marquis, “We went from an extreme -- ‘everyone needs a hug and cup of Ovaltine’ -- to a more nuanced system. Delinquents who need a minimum of incarceration and a maximum amount of structure get treated one way. And then there are the young criminals who for all intents and purposes are young adults -- they don’t act like children, don’t respond like children and you can’t treat them like children.”

Oregon voters approved the present system in 1994, when the tough-on-crime approach was sweeping the nation. Measure 11 stiffened sentences for certain violent offenses and applied them to defendants as young as 15.

By 2003, 31 states had passed laws requiring juveniles charged with certain crimes to be tried as adults. Also during the ‘90s, 13 states lowered the top age for juvenile court jurisdiction to 15 or 16. As a result, the number of inmates serving life without parole for crimes committed when they were under 18 began climbing; today 2,484 youthful offenders are serving such sentences.

But rollback advocates have scored a few successes. Connecticut last year raised its age threshold for adult court from 16 to 18. In 2006, Colorado abolished juvenile life without parole. In addition, several states have restricted adult-court transfers, and advocates are readying legislation for introduction in other states next year.

Hard-liners can claim some victories as well. This year, a California proposal to abolish life without parole for juveniles failed to get the required two-thirds majority needed for passage. And in Colorado, Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter Jr., a former district attorney, vetoed a bill that would have stripped prosecutors of their sole authority to charge juveniles in adult court.

“They wanted to take away our discretion -- there’s still a movement in our state to do that,” says Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey. “They wanted to have more hearings and more experts and cost a lot more money.”

Morrissey and other supporters of tough laws argue that prosecutors use them sparingly. In the suburbs of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Dakota County Prosecutor James C. Backstrom tells of resisting heavy pressure in 2006 to press for life without parole for two 17-year-olds who gunned down one of the boys’ parents in cold blood. Instead, the prosecutor accepted pleas to a charge that didn’t carry the no-parole proviso, giving them a chance to apply for release after 30 years.

“They knew right from wrong; there was no question they should be convicted of first-degree murder,” Backstrom says, “but they had no criminal history whatsoever. I just did not feel that locking them up for the rest of their natural lives was the right thing to do. They’ll have a chance to salvage some part of their lives. There were some strong disagreements, even from the victims’ family.”

Prosecutors everywhere can recall horrendous cases that warranted tough sentences. But rollback advocates argue such cases tend to obscure the fact that more than half of juvenile cases that end up in adult court don’t involve crimes against people.

“You could certainly say that when you expand the use of adult court transfer you are likely to capture more serious offenders,” says Jeffrey A. Butts, a research fellow at the University of Chicago’s Chapin Hall Center for Children. “But it’s a blunt instrument, so you pull a lot of youth into that pathway in the attempt to grab all serious offenders.”

According to the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), about 51 percent of all 6,885 juvenile cases transferred (“waived”) to adult court in 2005 (the most recent figures available) involved “person” offenses -- that is, crimes against individuals. The rest were property crimes (27 percent), drug offenses (12 percent) and public order violations (10 percent), such as weapons, sex or liquor violations.

No national statistics exist on the total number of juveniles tried in adult court. The closest estimate, based on calculations by Butts, is 200,000 a year.

To be sure, statistics don’t capture the nitty-gritty of crime in the streets. Lawyer Caspari says the teen who pulled a knife on him wasn’t eligible for transfer to adult court because Caspari was never cut or stabbed. But he could have been.

That’s why Caspari opposes allowing judges -- instead of prosecutors -- to send cases to adult court. The relative speed of the present system, he says, tells young offenders that they’ll be held accountable quickly. “The practical reality is the defendant’s lawyer can gum up the system by requesting it go back down to juvenile court, and that’s another nine months,” he says. “Is that the message you want to send to these kids?”

To view the entire report on CQ Researcher Online, click here. [subscription required]

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In the News: Two Students Shot and Killed at Arkansas School

Two students were shot and killed at Central Arkansas University outside a residence hall on Oct. 26. Police charged four men with capital murder for what they say may have been a random shooting; another student was injured. The men apparently drove up to a group of students near the Arkansas Hall dormitory and fired at least eight rounds from at least one semiautomatic pistol. The university cancelled classes the next day but resumed on Oct. 28, when more than 300 students, faculty members and local residents attended a memorial for the slain students.

To view the entire CQ Researcher Online report, "Discipline in Schools," click here. [subscription required]

To buy a PDF of the entire report, click here.


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