How Serious Is America's Juvenile Crime Problem?

What Doesn't Work in Juvenile Justice

"Adult Time for Adult Crime": Rhyme Without Reason

BACKGROUND FACT SHEET

How Severe is America's Juvenile Crime Problem?

Contrary to Hype from the Media and Some Public Officials, America is Not Under Siege from a New Generation of "Juvenile Superpredators"

• In recent years, juvenile crime rates have gone down, not up: By 1998 (latest data available), the juvenile homicide rate had declined by 52 percent from its 1993 high - bringing the youth murder rate to its lowest level since 1987. The combined rates for all serious violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) declined 32 percent for youth ages 15-17 from 1994-98 and 27 percent for children 14 and under.
• Juvenile crime rates did soar in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but even at the peak only a tiny fraction of youth were involved in serious violence. In 1992, for instance, five percent of juveniles ages 10-17 were arrested, and only nine percent of these arrests were for a violent offense. Thus, less than one-half of one percent of juveniles were arrested for a violent offense in 1992 (or any other year).
• Crime is not getting younger: 10-12 year-olds' percentage of all juvenile violent crime arrests has remained at or near eight percent for 15 consecutive years. While very young offenders often receive intense media attention, they account for only a small (and stable) percentage of juvenile crime.
• Despite intense media coverage of school shootings in Columbine and other communities over the past three years, there is no school violence epidemic. The number of people killed in school violence episodes has dropped by more than 50 percent over the past six years. In a nation with roughly 50 million school children, only 26 people died in school violence during the 1998-99 school year less than one-third the number of Americans (88) who were killed by lightning in 1996.

Nonetheless, Juvenile Crime Remains a Critical Concern in Our Society.

• Crime rates peak during youth. Both arrest data and self-report surveys reveal that crime rates peak during adolescence and young adulthood. The arrest rate for serious violent crimes rises rapidly during the adolescent years, peak at age 18, and drops rapidly thereafter.
• America's youth violence rates eclipse those of other democracies: America's firearms-related homicide death rate for children under age 15 is nearly 16 times the combined rate of 25 other industrialized countries.
• The youth population is growing. America's juvenile population has grown significantly over the past several years, rising from 13.3 million in1990 to 14.8 million in 1995 to 15.7 million in 2000. The adolescent population will peak in 2007 at 17 .3 million.
• Many of the known causes of delinquency remain rampant. Several risk factors that have proven to be closely associated with delinquency - child abuse and neglect; exposure to drugs, youth gangs, and firearms; truancy and school failure; poor parenting skills, and others - remain widespread in American society.

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BACKGROUND FACT SHEET

What Doesn't Work in Juvenile Justice

Over-Reliance on Incarceration and Other Out-of-Home Placements

• The United States will spend at least $10-15 billion dollars this year on juvenile justice. In most states, the majority of those funds will pay for confinement of a small segment of the juvenile offender population. The largest number of incarcerated youth are sent to "training schools," large correctional units typically housing 100 to 500 youth.
• Recidivism from training schools is uniformly high. Ninety-one percent of youth released from Minnesota training schools in 1991 were arrested within five years of release. In Maryland, 82 percent of youths released from correctional facilities in 1994 were referred to juvenile or criminal courts within two and one-half years after release. In Washington State, 59 percent of incarcerated youth re-offended within one year and 68 percent within two years. Virtually every study of recidivism among youth sentenced to juvenile training schools finds that at least 50 to 70 percent of offenders are arrested within one or two years after release.
• Most youth placed into training schools are not dangerous criminals. Nationwide, only 27 percent of youthful offenders in out-of-home placements in October 1997 were guilty of violent felony crimes. A 1993 study of 28 states found that only 14 percent of offenders in correctional training schools were committed for violent felonies, while more than half of the youth in state institutions were committed for property or drug crimes and were serving their first terms in a state institution. Another study in the early 1990s used an objective public safety risk instrument to determine that 31 percent of percent of incarcerated youth in 14 states could safely be placed in less secure settings.
• A similar pattern is evident with youth held in temporary detention centers awaiting trial. More than three-fourths of youth held in short-term detention are non-violent offenders. Yet detention populations have been rising in recent years (even as juvenile crime rates decline). Effective alternatives-to-detention programs remain underutilized in most jurisdictions.

Under-Investment in Community Based Services

• The vast majority of cases referred to the juvenile court do not result in incarceration: 43 percent are never formally charged, and two-fifths of those who are charged have their cases dropped or sign an informal probation agreement rather than go to trial. Of the roughly one-third of cases that do result in a court finding of delinquency (i.e., a conviction), more than two-thirds result in probation, release, or alternative sanction. Only 11 percent result in placement into corrections or to a group home or residential treatment center.
• However, the majority of all juvenile justice funding goes to confining and treating these 11 percent, while far less is available for community based services to address the remaining 89 percent of offenders before their delinquency escalates. In Maryland, only $36 million of the state's $136 million budget for juvenile justice in 1999 (27 percent) went to supervising or serving the 90 percent of youthful offenders not sentenced to an out-of-home placement.
• Juvenile probation officers in many jurisdictions are swamped with unrealistic caseloads. "Currently, large numbers of probationers on county caseloads go essentially unsupervised because available resources are no match for the multitude of cases," wrote the California Youth Authority in 1994, a situation that remains true today in most of California and also describes juvenile justice reality in many other parts of the country. "Minimum supervision/service and 'paper caseloads' predominate; and in general even supervised probationers are rarely seen by a probation officer."
• Despite widespread mental illness among the delinquency population, community mental health agencies are often unable or unwilling to serve juvenile justice youth - or they provide care lacking the intensity and quality required. As Shay Bilchik, then Administrator of the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, wrote in 1998, "Research and experience demonstrate that the services available in the juvenile justice system to alleviate these problems are entirely inadequate."

Inattention to Research and Results

• Only 26 states collect or publish any data on recidivism by youth returning to the community from training schools and other corrections programs. Only a small fraction of cities nationwide monitor the subsequent offending of youth placed into various programs and dispositions. Most contracted service providers in juvenile justice are paid through cost-reimbursement contracts that offer no rewards for meeting outcome goals. In many cases, there are no outcome goals - only agreements regarding services to be provided.
• Few states and communities have implemented Multisystemic Therapy or Functional Family Therapy, the two models with the strongest proven results in reducing re-offending by repeat juvenile offenders. In 2000, each model will serve roughly 5,000 youth in a nation that arrested 2.6 million young people in 1998 and confines more than 100,000 young people on any given day.
• "To date, most of the resources committed to the prevention and control of youth violence, both at the national and local levels, have been invested in untested programs based on questionable assumptions and delivered with little consistency or quality control," writes Dr. Delbert Elliott, director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence in Boulder, Colorado. "This means we will never know which (if any) of them have had some significant deterrent effect...and there will be no real accountability for the expenditures of scarce community resources."

Aggressive Punishment for Low-Level Offending and Adolescent Mischief

• Despite the substantial decline in serious crimes committed by young people since 1993, the total youth arrest rate climbed from 8,438 arrests per 100,000 youth ages 10-17 in 1993 to 9,219 per 100,000 youth in 1997. While arrests for serious violent crimes and serious property crimes dropped 20 percent and 6 percent respectively from 1993 to 1997, arrests grew 30 percent for disorderly conduct, 73 percent for drug abuse violations (mostly for possession), and 77 percent for curfew violations. The trend began to reverse in 1998, with arrest rates declining in most offense categories.
• Referrals to juvenile courts also rose during this period of decreasing crime, climbing from 1.48 million cases in 1993 to 1.76 million in 1997. The greatest increases came in less serious offenses such as disorderly conduct (up 38 percent), simple assault (up 45 percent), obstruction of justice (51 percent), and drug law violations (105 percent). Yet the number of cases formally adjudicated in juvenile courts increased far more quickly (up 26 percent) than the number of cases handled informally (only 10 percent). Despite the less serious offending, the number of youth placed into secure detention increased from 1993 to 1997.

Disproportionate Minority Confinement

• African American youth constitute 15 percent of the U.S. population ages 10 to 17, but they account for: 26 percent of juvenile arrests nationwide; 30 percent of delinquency referrals to juvenile court; 33 percent of delinquency cases formally charged in juvenile courts; 40 percent of juveniles removed from their homes by juvenile courts; 45 percent of youth held in juvenile detention; 46 percent of juveniles waived to criminal court; and 60 percent of juveniles serving time in adult prisons.
• In Wisconsin, minorities are 19 percent of juveniles arrested and 75 percent of juveniles locked up in adult prisons. In Pennsylvania, minorities constitute 30 percent of juvenile arrests but 87% of juveniles in secure corrections. In both Connecticut and Texas, 100 percent of the juveniles held in adult jails in 1996 were minorities.

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BACKGROUND FACT SHEET

"Adult Time for Adult Crime": Rhyme Without Reason

Transfers of Youthful Offenders to Adult Courts and Correctional Systems Are on the Rise Throughout Our Nation

• During the 1990s, 47 states enacted new laws to increase the number of young people tried in adult courts, rather than juvenile courts.
• The new laws were passed in order to get tough on adolescent crime – to provide stiff consequences that will turn around juvenile offenders and deter youth from committing crimes in the first place. However, evidence demonstrates that wholesale transfer of youth into the adult justice system accomplishes neither of these goals. Widespread use of transfers does, however, impose substantial costs on youth, taxpayers, and the justice system itself.

Transfer to Criminal Court Increases the Criminality of Youthful Offenders.

• In a Minnesota study, 58 percent of transferred youth committed an additional crime within two years versus 42 percent of youth retained in juvenile courts.
• A Florida study of more than 5,000 offenders found that transferred youth had a re-arrest rate more than 50 percent higher than youth retained in the juvenile justice system. Transferred youth were arrested more often, more quickly, and for more serious offenses than similar youth tried and punished in the juvenile justice system. Studies in Pennsylvania and New York report similar findings.

The Threat of Adult Time Does Not Deter Youth from Crime

• In the late 1970s, New York State lowered the age at which youth accused of murder and other violent offenses could be transferred to criminal court. In the ensuing years, violent crime rates among New York youth did not decline compared with youth in Philadelphia – which had no such transfer law.
• After Idaho passed a new law requiring transfer for violent youthful offenders ages 14-and above, its juvenile violent crime rate increased. During this same period, juvenile violence decreased in both Montana and Wyoming where the juvenile courts retained jurisdiction over most violent juvenile offenders.

Transfer to Criminal Court Does Not Ensure Tougher Punishment

• According to Jeffrey Butts and Adele Harrell of the Urban Institute, transfer to adult criminal courts results in more certain and severe sanctions only for juvenile offenders with the most serious cases – about 30 percent of all cases transferred. In roughly half the cases transferred, youth received sentences comparable to those they would have received in juvenile court, and in 20 percent of cases youth transferred to adult courts are treated more leniently than they would have been in juvenile court.
• In Florida, which has long led the nation in transfers of juvenile offenders to criminal courts, only 26 percent of youth transferred in 1999 were sentenced to state prison (15 percent) or a local jail (11 percent). Almost twice as many (48 percent) were sentenced to probation.

Confining Youthful Offenders with Adults Is Dangerous and Counterproductive

• Compared with youth confined in the juvenile justice system, youthful offenders housed in adult jails and prisons are:
  • eight times more likely to commit suicide;
• five times more likely to be sexually assaulted;
• twice as likely to be beaten by staff; and
• 50 percent more likely to be attacked with a weapon.
• Spending time in adult prison (surrounded by adult convicts) tends to increase the future criminality of youth. A study comparing Florida juvenile offenders housed in adult prisons versus those confined in juvenile corrections facilities found that youth in adult prisons were six times as likely as similar youth in juvenile lock-ups to anticipate committing new crimes after release (18 percent vs. 3 percent), and far less likely to say they anticipated remaining crime-free (55 percent vs. 34 percent).
• Three-fourths of all youth who commit serious violent crimes during adolescence terminate their offending by age 21. The key difference between delinquent youth who desist and those who continue their violent behavior is that desisters find a place in the mainstream labor force and/or a long-term companion. By stamping youthful offenders with a criminal record, transfer to adult court diminishes the likelihood that juvenile offenders will find a place in law-abiding society.

Minority Youth Are Disproportionately Targeted for Transfers to Adult Court

• Nationwide, 77 percent of youths admitted to adult prisons are ethnic minorities.
• In the nation's 75 largest counties, 67 percent of youth tried as adults in criminal court are African American.

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