By Vincent Schiraldi
Vincent Schiraldi is director of the Justice Policy Institute, a
research and public policy organization based in Washington, D.C.
In the aftermath of tragic school shootings by juveniles in Jonesboro,
Arkansas, West Paducah, Kentucky, and Pearl, Mississippi, Americans
are searching for answers about kids who kill, particularly in rural
communities and schools. Fortunately, as shocking as these cases are,
they run contrary to recent juvenile homicide trends and represent more
of an aberration than the norm.
Juvenile homicides have fallen sharply over the past few years and
are still extremely rare in rural communities. According to FBI data,
juvenile homicide arrests dropped 30 percent--from 3,102 to 2,172--between
1994 and 1996.
Juvenile homicides are still overwhelmingly an inner city phenomenon.
A Justice Policy Institute analysis released in April showed that 93.4
percent of counties in America experienced one or no juvenile homicide
arrests in 1995. Nearly a third of juvenile homicide arrests occurred
in just four cities--New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Detroit--which
contain about 5 percent of America's youth population. Indeed, there
has not been a juvenile homicide in Jonesboro for more than four years,
and neither West Paducah nor Pearl experienced a juvenile homicide in
1996. Last year, 1,800 juveniles were arrested for homicides in urban
areas, compared to 93 in rural communities.
Furthermore, schools are at least as safe from juvenile homicides
as they have been over the past several years, probably safer. A recent
crime survey of 1,234 schools by the U.S. Department of Education found
no juvenile homicides reported in any of the schools surveyed. According
to the National School Safety Center, there were 55 school homicides
in 1992 and 19 last year--a decrease of 65 percent. The Los Angeles
Unified School District, which has about 600,000 students, has not experienced
a homicide since 1995. According to the Justice Department, the District
of Columbia, a city of approximately the same size, has experienced
about 600 homicides since that time.
Does all of this mean that America does not have a juvenile homicide
problem? Of course not. Even a drop to 2,172 represents a juvenile homicide
rate that is monumental by the standards of other industrialized nations.
Still, what sets America's children apart from those in other Western
nations, or from children of past generations here, is not, as some
have suggested, television violence, video games, rock and roll, or
a mythically lenient juvenile justice system. What truly distinguishes
present day juvenile homicide rates in America is the dual impact of
unprecedented access to guns and historically high rates of child poverty.
Between 1984 and 1994, arrests for gun homicides by juveniles increased
an astonishing fourfold, while the rates for homicides committed by
other means stayed the same. America's children are killed by guns at
12 times the rate of children in the other 25 industrialized nations,
combined. According to a Justice Department survey, only 35 percent
of America's teenagers say that it would be difficult for them to obtain
a gun.
If America's children had simply become more murder-prone than past
generations, one would have expected increases in homicides committed
with and without guns, yet no such increase exists. What is more likely
happening is that adolescents today are as together or confused as adolescents
have always been, they just have exponentially greater access to handguns.
Likewise, the United States has a staggering child poverty rate as
compared to other Western nations and past generations of American youth.
In a 1995 study by the National Science Foundation, the United States
not only had the highest rate of child poverty among 17 industrialized
nations, but our rate was nearly three times that of those other nations.
In 1995, there were 14.8 million youth in poverty, about one in four
children in America. This is up substantially from 1970, when there
were about 8 million youth living in poverty.
The gun lobby frequently points to Switzerland and Israel, both of
which have high gun ownership and lower homicide rates than the United
States, as an argument against gun control. However, America has three
times as many children in poverty per capita as Switzerland and twice
as many as Israel.
If one were to try to design a society to produce a high juvenile
murder rate, one could hardly do better than to nearly double the number
of children in poverty and create a ready pipeline to cheap, easily
concealable handguns.
As strong as the connection is between child poverty, guns, and juvenile
homicides, it is even stronger when viewed through the lens of the past
three or so years. During that time, there has not been a 30 percent
drop in television or movie violence, nor in the production of violent
video games or grunge rock music. There has, however, been a 30 percent
drop in juvenile homicides, a decrease that can be largely attributed
to improving economic conditions for teenagers and diminished access
to handguns.
For example, between 1995 and 1997--precisely the time when the juvenile
homicide rate was falling--the adolescent unemployment rate dropped
by 10 percent. Coupled with increases in the minimum wage and decreases
in the adult unemployment rate, the financial picture for America's
teenagers has improved significantly over the past several years, although
it still has a long way to go to achieve parity with other Western nations.
Furthermore, in 1995, for the first time in our nation's history,
it became a federal offense for America's juveniles to possess handguns
or ammunition for handguns. Since that time, state and local jurisdictions
around the country have passed sensible gun control ordinances, and
law enforcement efforts, such as Boston's Operation Night Light, have
prioritized getting guns out of the hands of kids.
In the wake of tragedies like the Jonesboro killings, it is vitally
important that policy makers take a hard look at creating crime policies
driven by data and sober analyses and not get swept up in a media-driven
hysteria. By pushing for a higher minimum wage and making handgun possession
for juveniles illegal, the Clinton administration has done just that.
The president's statements in the wake of the Joneboro killings, in
which he cautioned restraint and called for a Justice Department analysis
of juvenile crime, are certainly a hopeful sign.
This contrasts sharply with the behavior of Senator Jeff Sessions
(R-Alabama) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), cosponsors of a harshly punitive
juvenile crime bill. Senator Sessions in particular has seized on the
Arkansas tragedy. Since the killings there, he has done the talk show
circuit and issued statements to tout his bill, which would jail even
teenage runaways with adults and mandate that states try juveniles as
adults for some crimes at the age of 14. According to the National Center
for Juvenile Justice, all but one state, Hawaii, already permit children
as young as 14 to be tried as adults.
On ABC News This Week, Senator Sessions claimed that he was "morally
offended" that the youths in Jonesboro could not be harshly punished
and used the opportunity to drum up support for his foundering bill.
In a Baltimore Sun newspaper article following the tragedy, Senator
Hatch went so far as to state, "If we don't pass a juvenile crime bill,
the country's going to see more and more of these things." As commentators
on one broadcast noted, however, not one of the provisions of the Hatch/Sessions
bill would have applied to the Jonesboro youths.
More importantly, several gun control amendments were proposed to
the juvenile crime bill that were beaten back by Senators Sessions and
Hatch. One, which would have mandated safety locks on guns, might actually
have been able to prevent the tragedy at Jonesboro. Other sensible gun
control proposals would ban the manufacture of cheap, poorly made and
easily concealable "Saturday night specials" and would forbid gun stores
from selling more than one gun a month to individual buyers to curb
illegal resale of black market guns.
Let's hope that the United States Senate can show more interest in
locking up guns than kids. In an election year, with so many politicians
beholding to the gun lobby, that seems like a long shot.
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