Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/homicide/)
Juvenile offenses involving property, drug and public order offenses, combined, declined in 2019 to their lowest levels since 2005, according to recently released National Center on Juvenile Justice data also showing that probation, rather than detention, increasingly was assigned in five categories of juvenile crime.
The U.S. Department of Justice recently released two statistical reports that appear to stand in contrast. A report released in June of this year states that in 2018, law enforcement agencies made the fewest number of arrests of juveniles in almost 40 years. But a different report, released in April, shows that juvenile homicide cases spiked by 35% between 2014 and 2018, which overlaps with the period of the June report.
The ostensible discrepancy between these two reports, if viewed without sufficient context, can potentially lead to some misinterpretations and misunderstandings. In particular, given what is occurring currently with regards to the Black Lives Matter movement and heightened tensions surrounding police-community relations, caution should be used when these statistics are directly cited in relation to cases involving Black residents in urban communities.
Criminologist Richard Rosenfeld has previously pointed out the problematic nature of centering the statistical rise in homicides around a narrative about tensions between the police and Black communities. This idea, pushed by some commentators in the popular media, that the increase in homicides was attributed to law enforcement agencies reducing their policing in Black neighborhoods as a result of police-community tensions, is often referred to as the Ferguson Effect.
Decades of research from the fields of criminology and adolescent brain science find that the decisions made in youth — even very unwise decisions — do not...
By Natalie Krebs and Lorraine Ma
CHICAGO -- It was rare news in a summer filled with frightening crime statistics, equally alarming headlines and a mayor and police superintendent on the defensive: For the month of July, killings in this city were down 11 percent from the same period last year, with the number of homicides for the month at 49. But such news matters little to people like Shirley Askew, who grew up on Chicago’s West Side, whiling away days playing in the streets and city parks. And it means little when the overall homicide rate for the year is still up nearly 27 percent. Many children are scared; they’re kept indoors, and, in a very real sense, locked out of their childhoods. Now 59, with four sons and four grandsons, Askew indeed worries about the increasing neighborhood violence that threatens local children’s safety. Just Thursday afternoon, not far from where Askew spoke with reporters, two 16-year-old boys were gunned down and another wounded.
It’s no secret: Social media has redefined the way people communicate, especially among the under-30 crowd. Now, law enforcement agencies are catching on and increasingly incorporating social media into their arsenal of crime-fighting tools.
Over the past few months a series of high profile social-media-turned-criminal acts have made headlines -- from flash mobs turned violent on the streets of Philadelphia to Atlanta house parties taped off as homicide scenes -- and law enforcement has taken note.
Some agencies have been quick to recognize the potential of embracing social media. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, has run a “Social Media Monitoring Center” since early 2009; Correction officials in California have worked directly with Facebook to thwart inmates from accessing social profiles while behind bars; And police in New York formed a special unit to monitor social channels for gang-related and other potential criminal acts.
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