Opinion: What Surge in Juvenile Homicide Means, What To Do About It
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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.