Understanding the “Whys” Behind Juvenile Crime Trends

Understanding the "Whys" Behind Juvenile Crime Trends

1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Grantee: University of Pennsylvania Award Number: 2001-JN-FX-K001 November 2012

Preface

In 2001, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) funded a multiyear project called "Understanding the `Whys' Behind Juvenile Crime Trends." It was designed to examine the various explanations offered for the drop in juvenile crime during the 1990s and to assess how useful they were in developing leading indicators of future trends. More specifically, the project had three distinct but related goals:

1. To better understand the national downturn in most measures of juvenile crime, which, for most types of crime, began around 1993 following a large increase during the preceding 7 years;

2. To work with local jurisdictions to incorporate valid explanations and correlates into a tool that could be applied to data they already collect, so they could monitor leading indicators of future turning points in their juvenile crime trends; and

3. To disseminate to the juvenile justice field both a better understanding of juvenile crime trends and the leading-indicator tools developed with the local partners.

This effort was complemented by a series of ongoing, supplemental research projects intended to fill gaps in knowledge that could prove important to predicting juvenile crime.

In one study, Fabio and colleagues (2006) measured age, period, and cohort effects on the association and time lag between precursor risky behaviors (e.g., school truancy) and serious juvenile offending. In another, Weisburd and colleagues (2009) used Seattle data to address two questions: (1) neighborhood trajectories of violent juvenile crime (Groff et al., 2009), and (2) the concentration of juvenile crime in locations as small as street blocks and the influence of those locations on jurisdictionlevel trends in juvenile crime (Weisburd et al., 2007). The Seattle results also will be reported in a future OJJDP Research Bulletin.

Additional research that contributed to this book included the following: Souryal-Shriver's review of published research on causes and correlates of juvenile crime; analyses by Koper and Daly of trends in community characteristics, criminal and juvenile justice practices, and juvenile crime during the 1990s in large cities and counties; Lynch and Snyder's analysis of the interplay between juvenile drug dealing and other forms of economic crime by juveniles; and Huizinga's analysis of Denver data to measure the extent to which trends in known causes and correlates of juvenile crime may explain jurisdiction-level juvenile crime trends.

Finally, two future papers by Koper, Shelley, and Roth will report the results of attempts to forecast juvenile crime trends in Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

The authors gratefully acknowledge OJJDP's financial support of this work through Grant #2001JN-FX-K001. The findings and opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policy of OJJDP. We are extremely grateful for the advice and assistance of two OJJDP grant monitors: Barbara Allen-Hagen, who began the project; and Janet Chiancone, who saw it through to completion. The work of the researchers named above contributed immeasurably to the quality of the study. We are also grateful to the following individuals who served as advisors to the project in its early stages: David Farrington, David Huizinga, John Laub, Rolf Loeber,

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James Lynch, Doris McKenzie, Howard Snyder, David Weisburd, and Charles Wellford. The authors, however, are solely responsible for all errors and omissions in this report.

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Chapter 1: The Whys of the Project

By examining national trends in serious violence, one gains a better understanding of why juvenile crime dropped so dramatically during the 1990s and remained relatively low for at least a decade. While most would agree that the decrease actually occurred, there still are those who contend that the drop (or its continuation) is largely an artifact of manipulation of crime statistics by some police departments and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (Karmen, 2000). Measuring the decrease through multiple lenses should put this speculation to rest.

Disaggregating overall trends in serious juvenile crime informs the use of more rigorous analytical methods for identifying and isolating factors that preceded or accompanied the drop in crime. To the extent that the decrease was greater for some types of crime than others, greater among some populations, or greater in some specific places, that helps narrow the range of possible explanations. If the crime drop occurred disproportionately in large central cities, for example, then the search for explanations could focus on those places and determine what it is about them that could have precipitated their more pronounced decreases. Finally, the crime trends can be used to check on the adequacy of the explanations emerging from more sophisticated analysis. Factors identified from theory and more fine-grained analysis as the likely causes of crime drop must be shown to fit the national crime trends during that period. That is, these factors must be shown to (1) have a likely effect on crime; (2) be of sufficient magnitude or prevalence that changes in them could account for a substantial portion of the drop; and (3) be distributed in the population, over time, and across places in a manner that would account for the observed trends. The description of crime trends presented here, then, will not only suggest where to look for explanations but also test whether the factors identified in other analyses could have produced the decreases observed.

The intent of this project is to meet a specific need in juvenile justice policy analysis rather than provide a comprehensive review of all scientific literature on causes of juvenile crime.

This book has five chapters, Chapters 2?5, which will be summarized in the remainder of this chapter:

Chapter 2 establishes the groundwork for the subsequent three, using data from the National

Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) to describe Nationlevel trends in serious juvenile crime.

Chapter 3 accounts for trends in measurable conditions and processes in communities which,

combined, contribute to national trends in serious and violent juvenile delinquency.

Chapter 4 focuses primarily on the cultural processes that influence families and, in turn,

children's involvement in delinquency. It examines both risk and protective cultural factors related to family, school, religiosity, the legitimacy of the criminal justice system, violence in the media, use of firearms, and gang membership.

Chapter 5 includes evaluations of the impact of various public policies and practices on

juvenile crime trends.

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Rates per 100,000 persons age 12-17

Overview of Chapter 2

Lynch and Snyder report that UCR arrest counts and NCVS victimization counts provide consistent accounts of national trends in serious violent juvenile crime (i.e., homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) between 1980 and 2000.

Figure 1-1. Juvenile Arrest Rate for Serious Violence, 1980?2004

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0.0 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Years Violent Crime Index

Figure 1-1 displays annual UCR juvenile arrest rates for violent crimes for the period 1980?2000. The rate hovered around 300 arrests per 100,000 juveniles from 1980 through 1987, when it began rising steadily to a peak at about 530 in 1993. The trend reversed at that point; by 2000, the rate had returned to about 300 arrests per 100,000, where it remained for the next several years.

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Figure 1-2. Serious Violent Offending Rates for Juveniles and Youth Adults with and without Adult Co-offending, 1980?2004

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Rates per 100,000

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0 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Years

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