1996-97 National High School Debate Topic:
Juvenile Crime

Last year an estimated three million crimes were committed in the nation's schools and some 100,000 guns were carried to school every day. Yet even these numbers represent only a fraction of the crime and violence that confront america's young people. Directing youth away from crime and appropriately dealing with those who commit crimes is of increasing importance as demographic trends indicate that juvenile crime will continue to increase well into the next century.

Within this resolution affirmative teams might advocate programs to deal with youth gangs, or revision of the juvenile justice system, as well as programs aimed at the underlying social conditions that bred juvenile crime. Negative debaters might counter with arguments about the efficacy of particular programs, or the need to balance justice and fairness with crime control as well as the desirability of altering the juvenile justice system's focus on rehabilitation.

JUVENILE CRIME: How should the federal government reduce juvenile crime in the United States?

Resolved: That the federal government should establish a program to substantially reduce juvenile crime in the United States.

Serious crime by youths is on the rise:

• The number of juvenile murderers tripled between 1984 and 1994.

• Youthful murderers using guns increased four-fold over the same period.

• Juvenile gang killings have nearly quadrupled between 1980 and 1992.

• In 1994, eight in ten juvenile murderers used a firearm, up from five in ten in 1983.

• The number of juveniles murdered increased 82 percent between 1984 and 1994.

• The nationwide juvenile arrest rate for violent crimes increased 50 percent between 1988 and 1994.

Source: U.S. Dept. Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1996 Update on Violence

Large numbers of juveniles commit crime:

• In 1994 125,085 youths age 17 and younger were arrested for violent Index crimes (murder and nonnegligent homicide, forcible rape, robbery or aggravated assault), including 3,102 for murder.

• In 1994 a total of 2.2 million youths under age 18 were arrested on non-traffic charges, including 735,648 for the eight Index crimes (125,085 for violent crimes and 610,563 for burglary, larceny/theft, auto theft or arson).

• Nearly one of every five persons arrested for a violent Index crime was under age 18 in 1994, while youths ages 5 to 17 were only 15.5 percent of the population.

Source: U.S. Dept. Justice, FBI, Crime in the United States, Uniform Crime Reports, 1994

Crime will increase along with the juvenile population:

• There will be 1.8 million more males 14 to 24 years old, the most crime-prone group, in the year 2005 and 1.2 million more in 2010, according to the Census Bureau.

• Juvenile arrests for violent crimes will more than double by the year 2010 if recent national trends continue,

• The number of youths arrested for murder is expected to increase by 145 percent by the year 2010.

Source: Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C.

Stopping Teenage Crime

Teenagers commit the largest portion of all violent crime in America. While the national rate of violent crime has leveled off and the nation's population of juveniles has fallen, violent crimes committed by juveniles have risen sharply.

More murders and robberies are committed by 18-year-old males than by any other age group. More than one-third of all murders are committed by offenders under the age of 21.

The number of 13- to 15-year-olds arrested for murder jumped from 390 in 1982 to 740 a decade later.

By the time the juvenile justice system finally incarcerates an older teenager for a violent crime, the offender often has a rap sheet from his early teens - or before. Actual lockups are rare.The demographics will soon change to favor even more youth violence. The number of male teenagers has been declining since about 1980, and in 1995 America has its fewest number since 1965. But the male teenage population will rebound by the turn of the century. By 2010, the number of 15- to 19-year-old males will be 11.5 million, an increase of 30 percent from the 1995 low.

Today's juvenile justice system is oriented toward rehabilitation and away from accountability. The statistics indicate that this must change. Government must affirm, through consistent enforcement of law, that bad actions bring about bad consequences.

Source: Paul McNulty, "Natural Born Killers? Preventing the Coming Explosion of Teenage Crime," Policy Review, Winter 1995, Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, DC 20002, (202) 546-4400.

Youth And Crime

Where most Americans live, all crimes except auto thefts have decreased since 1980. For urban minority Americans, however, all crimes including homicide are up. Crime today is concentrated in urban America, and urban crime is concentrated in inner-city neighborhoods.

More and more crime involves chronic violent offenders under 18 years of age.

• Only about 5 percent of all juvenile arrests are for violent crimes, but these arrests increased 50 percent from 1987 to 1991, twice the increase for persons 18 years of age or older.

• There were nearly 123,000 violent-crime arrests of juveniles in 1991 (the latest year for which complete statistics are available), breaking all records.

• Juvenile arrests included 3,400 for murder, 6,300 for rape, 44,500 for robbery and 69,700 for aggravated assault.

The increase in violent juvenile crime has been concentrated largely among young black males, and the victims are mostly other young black males.

• Between 1976 and 1991, the homicide victimization rate among white youth remained flat at about two to three murders per 100,000.

• By contrast, between 1976 and 1986, the homicide victimization rate among black youth fluctuated between seven and 10 murders per 100,000, then increased steadily to about 14 in 1988 and 20 in 1991.

• Homicide is now far and away the leading cause of death among African-American teenagers.

Juvenile arrest rates for heroin and cocaine rose more than 700 percent between 1980 and 1990, but for African-American teen-agers, the rate increased by more than 2,000 percent. Liquor also plays a large role in inner-city crime and other problems. A pattern of persistent alcohol abuse is about as likely to be associated with chronic predatory criminality as a pattern of persistent drug abuse.

Source: John J. DiIulio, Jr., "America's Ticking Crime Bomb and How to Defuse It," Wisconsin Interest, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring/Summer 1994, Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, Inc., 3107 N. Shepard Avenue, Milwaukee, WI 53211, (414) 963-0600.

Arrest Rates Are High

For the first time in almost a decade, nationwide arrest rates for violent crimes by juveniles fell slightly in 1995, according to preliminary data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation from local police reports. The FBI also reported that the arrest rate for homicides by juveniles fell for the second year in a row -- after tripling during the previous decade.

• The rate of homicides committed by youths age 10 to 17 rose from 5.4 per 100,000 in 1984 to 14.5 in 1993.

• In 1994 it dropped to 13.2 per 100,000 and in 1995 to 11.2 per 100,000.

• The overall rate of juvenile violent crime -- which includes assault, robbery and rape, as well as murder, declined by 2.9 percent in 1995.

The preliminary figures for 1995 are subject to revision and a final report is expected in November. Experts are cautious in interpreting the data -- which weren't broken down by region -- and give various reasons for the drop in homicides:

• The most violent young people -- the first group involved in the crack cocaine trade and usually armed -- have died or become adults.

• The drop may be due in part to the growing number of state laws that allow juveniles to be tried as adults, suggests Attorney General Janet Reno.

• And since seven or eight cities account for 25 percent of all the homicides in the country, lower murder rates in those cities reduce the national average, points out criminologist Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon University.

According to a March 1996 Justice Department report on juvenile crime, the actual number of homicides by juveniles exceeded 26,000 in 1994. And the percentage of murderers using guns quadrupled, while the rate of murders using other weapons remained the same.

Sources: Fox Butterfield, "Crimes of Violence Among Juveniles Decline Slightly," New York Times, August 9, 1996; and Ronald J. Ostrow, "Number of Young Killers Triples from 1984 to '94," Houston Chronicle, March 8, 1996.

Juvenile Crime Likely To Increase

A tidal wave of juvenile crime and violence is gathering force. Criminologists have variously called it an epidemic, a ticking time bomb, the calm before the storm and a long descent into night. The reasons for the coming explosion in crime are both demographic and cultural.

• Over the next ten years, the population of 14 to 17 year olds will grow 23 percent, and the current generation of juveniles has already brought us the worst juvenile crime rates in recorded history.

• Since 1965, the juvenile arrest rate has more than tripled, and over the last ten years the homicide rate has more than doubled among 14 to 17 year olds.

• During the 1980s, the white juvenile crime rate grew twice as fast as the black juvenile crime rate, and from 1983 to 1992, the arrest rate for murder grew 166 percent among blacks, but also grew 94 percent among whites.

The increasing juvenile murder rate coincides with an increase in "stranger murders," suggesting juvenile predators are less discriminating in their targets.

• While in the past most murders occurred between family members and friends, the FBI recently reported that 53 percent of homicides are committed by strangers.

• "Stranger murders" are now four times as common as killings by family members.

• Perpetrators of stranger murders have a better than 80 percent chance of not being punished.

Experts say the coming crime wave is not so much due to poverty as to a poverty of values. While more police and prisons may help, the cure, they believe, in a renaissance of personal responsibility, and a reassertion of responsibility over rights and community over egoism.

Source: Andrew Peyton Thomas (Assistant Attorney General for Arizona), "Woodstock: A Family Picnic," Investor's Business Daily, December 29, 1995.

All Crime May Increase

Crime rates may have fallen somewhat in recent years, but they are still near all-time highs. And there is worse to come, according to criminologists.

• There are now about 10 million violent victimizations annually.

• Americans are twice as likely to be assaulted, robbed at the point of a gun, raped or abducted as they are to be seriously injured in a car accident.

• Experts say the recent mild decline in crime is due to the aging of the Baby Boom generation.

• But by 2000, there will be about 500,000 more 14-17 year old males than now -- many from fatherless ghetto homes and so out of control that they scare older convicts now doing time with them.

Criminal experts see no easy answer to the approaching crime wave. These up and coming criminals are unreachable by appeals to human empathy or threats of future punishment. The results are predictable.

• According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the teen murder rate in the U.S. grew by 22 percent in the period 1990-1994.

• In states where over-crowded prisons forced convicts to be released early, violent-crime rates rose 10 percent faster than the nation as a whole.

• Such early-release prisoners committed and average of two to three additional violent crimes annually.

Experts say that society must put its hopes and resources into more prisons and more police to avoid a predicted future crime bloodbath.

Source: Paul Akers (Scripps Howard News Service), "Tracking the Crime Curve Into the Future," Washington Times, May 13, 1996.