CJ 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 69: Deinstitutionalisation, Prison Overcrowding, Stress Management
Myths About Juvenile Justice
Historically, juvenile violent crime arrest rates rose 5.2 percent from 1987 to 1989, 12.1
percent from 1989 to 1990, 7.6 percent from 1990 to 1991, and by at least 4 percent in
every year thereafter until 1994. Recently, however, juvenile violence has declined.
Arrests for violent crime among juveniles aged 10 to 17 dropped nationally by almost 3
percent from 1994 to 1995. Although juvenile crime now appears to be on the decrease,
lawmakers have passed tough laws enabling states to try more juveniles as adults.
New studies call the existence of the new laws into question. One study shows that
virtually all the increase in homicides by juveniles in the late 1980s was attributable to
crimes committed with handguns, not to the emergence of a new breed of
superpredator teenagers. While the rate of gun killings by juveniles tripled from 1986 to
1993 and has fallen since, the rate of homicides by juveniles with other weapons has
not changed.
New research on juvenile violence also suggests that much of the increase in arrests of
juveniles in aggravated assaults in the late 1980s was not because teenagers were
more violent, but the result of increased police activity, as officers arrested young
people in altercations that would have been ignored earlier. Franklin Zimring, director of
the Earl Warren Legal Institute at the University of California at Berkeley, claims that
reclassification by the police of juvenile fights into aggravated assaults created a
completely artificial juvenile crime wave. “Youth in 1998,” according to Zimring, “are no
more prone to violence than were teens 20 years ago.”
But Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University, warns that ‐
homicides by juveniles remained higher in 1997 than they were in the early 1980s
before the advent of crack cocaine, semiautomatic handguns, and gangs ignited an
increase in killings by teens. The rate of homicide by juveniles 14 to 17 years old
increased from 8.5 per 100,000 in 1984 to 30.2 in 1993 and then declined to 16.5 in
1997, according to James Alan Fox, dean of the College of Criminal Justice at
Northeastern University.
Nevertheless, Zimring argues that most people don't understand that the increase, and
more recently, decrease, really involves the role of handguns and not evidence of a
violent new breed of teenagers. Since the police in many big cities have begun
aggressive programs to take guns away from juveniles, the juvenile homicide rate has
dropped.
The belief that locking up more juveniles is cost-effective
Today, conservatives favor a host of reforms that would boost the number of youths
incarcerated. These include
Replacing the juvenile court's rehabilitation philosophy with a get tough policy ‐
that makes the punishment fit the crime.
Passing mandatory sentencing laws for juveniles charged with violent crimes and‐
drug crimes.
Building more juvenile correctional institutions.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Historically, juvenile violent crime arrest rates rose 5. 2 percent from 1987 to 1989, 12. 1 percent from 1989 to 1990, 7. 6 percent from 1990 to 1991, and by at least 4 percent in every year thereafter until 1994. Arrests for violent crime among juveniles aged 10 to 17 dropped nationally by almost 3 percent from 1994 to 1995. Although juvenile crime now appears to be on the decrease, lawmakers have passed tough laws enabling states to try more juveniles as adults. New studies call the existence of the new laws into question. One study shows that virtually all the increase in homicides by juveniles in the late 1980s was attributable to crimes committed with handguns, not to the emergence of a new breed of superpredator teenagers. While the rate of gun killings by juveniles tripled from 1986 to. 1993 and has fallen since, the rate of homicides by juveniles with other weapons has not changed.
