Juvenile Crime in the U.S

Juvenile crime in the United States refers to illegal acts committed by individuals under the age of eighteen and is a multifaceted issue linked to various social factors such as race, poverty, and family dynamics. Historically, the treatment of youthful offenders has evolved, shifting from viewing them as adult criminals to a focus on rehabilitation, especially following the establishment of separate juvenile justice systems in the early 1900s. However, during the late 20th century, a rise in violent juvenile crime led to a resurgence in punitive measures, with many juveniles facing adult charges and severe sentences, including life imprisonment and the death penalty. Landmark legal decisions, such as *Roper v. Simmons* in 2005, challenged these harsh penalties, emphasizing the developmental differences between juveniles and adults. Public perception of juvenile crime is often influenced by media portrayals of violent incidents, which can distort societal understanding of the issue. Research has identified various risk factors for youth violence, including community influences, family instability, and inadequate educational opportunities. Furthermore, there is ongoing debate regarding the effectiveness of punitive versus rehabilitative approaches, with recent trends indicating a preference for reform and restorative justice models aimed at preventing recidivism and better integrating juveniles back into society. Overall, juvenile crime remains a complex issue, shaped by evolving legal frameworks, societal attitudes, and a growing understanding of child development.

Published in: 2021

By: Harbeck, Karen M.

Subject Terms

Juvenile Crime in the U.S.

Abstract

Few social policy issues are as highly emotionally charged as those pertaining to juvenile crime. Opposing views abound concerning the nature and extent of the problem, the causes, theoretical underpinnings, and the best ways to mitigate this tragic trend. Youthful offenders were treated like adult criminals until around 1900, when separate juvenile processing procedures developed with goals of rehabilitation. Facing drastic increases in violent crime during the 1980s, however, the pendulum swung back to processing many juvenile offenders as adults; possibly being charged with punishments as severe as life in prison and the death penalty. In 2005, the US Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that the death penalty for those under the age of eighteen was cruel and unusual punishment and was therefore unconstitutional. Further research on juvenile brain development and malfunction, made possible by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), has raised scientific and human rights challenges to many "get tough" social policies.

Overview

Juvenile crime is defined as illegal acts against people or property committed by individuals under the age of eighteen. It is a complex social concern inextricably linked with issues of race, poverty, gender, child abuse and neglect, family breakdown, educational failure, urban decay, substance abuse, child development, and failed social services and networks. In addition to the science relevant to these issues, however, the debate over juvenile offenders is also governed by the media, public opinion, and personal beliefs. Individuals' own fears and vulnerabilities help shape personal and public policy views toward juvenile criminal offenders and the mechanisms by which crime can be reduced in cities and towns.

It is clear that most people believe juvenile violent crime to be a significant problem. In January 2007, for example, the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) completed a national poll of US voters, and nine out of ten respondents agreed that "youth crime is a major problem in our communities" (Krisberg & Marchionna, 2007). Stories like the following fuel fears and a sense of helplessness: In March of 1998, Andrew Golden, eleven, and Mitchell Johnson, thirteen, were students at the Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Coming to school dressed in camouflage fatigues and possessing a van full of ammunition, Golden set off the school's fire alarm. While their classmates filed out of the building, the boys opened fire upon them. Fifteen people were injured, five fatally (Ramsland, 2007). In Chicago, an eleven-year-old boy murdered a fourteen-year-old girl to impress his fellow gang members (Satterthwaite, 1997, p. 18). In Whitfield County, Georgia, six youths, ages fifteen through seventeen, were arrested and charged with stealing several vehicles and breaking into hundreds of others (Mitchell, 2013).

Many experts in juvenile crime, however, fault the media for what they see as sensationalistic, ratings-driven coverage of a relative few gruesome criminal events. Media reporter Susan Douglas (1993) and others argue that this emphasis on specific incidences of juvenile violent crime is evil in its own right because it fails to consider the institutional violence in society that fosters juvenile crime, such as poverty, racism, unemployment, lack of gun control, poor educational opportunities, failed drug treatment policies, violent homes and communities, and inadequate social and medical services.

Juvenile Crime Rates. One salient topic concerning juvenile crime, then, is the nature and extent of it in society. Experts on juvenile crime usually rely on annual data provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime Report (UCR), which tracks arrests involvingunif all offenders, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). Additionally, the National Crime Victimization Survey released by the US Department of Justice surveys thousands of households nationwide to gather data on criminal victimization that was not reported to the police. According to the UCR, 7 percent of the people arrested in the United States in 2019 were juveniles (youth under age eighteen), and the numbers of juvenile arrests dropped by 3.4 percent from 2018 to 2019. Youth were found responsible for 11.1 percent of property crimes in 2019 and 9.8 percent of the violent crimes reported that year (Criminal Justice Information Services Division, 2020).

While juvenile crime data raises alarm for some public policy advocates, others argue that juvenile crime rates have not soared from the 1980s onward, and, in fact, they have declined or remained constant when one considers more detailed and reliable indicators. Because juvenile offenders are more likely to commit crimes with their peers ("co-offend"), for example, the successful arrest of three youths for one murder inflates the actual juvenile crime data to suggest that there were three murders, not one. Moreover, thousands of youths are confined for minor offenses, such as status offenses (actions related to their age, such as school truancy and curfew violations) and technical violations of probation or parole (Sawyer, 2019), skewing the overall picture of youth criminality. Thus, one major challenge in any analysis of juvenile crime and resulting public policy is one's interpretation of the data available about the nature and extent of juvenile criminal actions annually.

Applications

Causes of Youth Violence. Seifert (1999) reports that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency (OJJDP) identified six risk categories for youth violence that provides a useful way of organizing causal conditions for youthful offenders: Community/society, economic, family, individual, school, and peers.

"Community/society" entails cultural norms for weapons, violent media and video games, hostile attitudes toward women, easy availability of illegal drugs, and the acquisition of things and power.
Economic risks pertain to poverty, homelessness, and joblessness.
Family risks include violence, child abuse and neglect, conflict, and lack of nurturing and support. Additionally, Mocan and Tekin (2006) found that "gun availability at home is positively related to the propensity to commit crime for juveniles." Despite research suggesting that the public believes parents have some responsibility for the crimes of their children, there seems to be little public support for laws making parents liable for those crimes (Brank & Weisz, 2004).
A failed educational experience and failing educational systems reflect the category of "schools" in the OJJDP report. One interesting study on the short-term effect of attending school on juvenile crime was reported by Jacob and Lefgren (2003). During periods of school attendance, juvenile property crime decreased by 14 percent; unfortunately, during that same period of school attendance, the concentration of youth in schools increased violent crime by 28 percent. Similarly, Fischer and Argyle (2018) found that juvenile property crime increased significantly after a four-day school week was introduced in some counties, though violent crime remained the same. The connection between education and schooling and the level of juvenile crime was also closely monitored during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdowns that included school closures; officials expressed concern over the need for support and activity services (initially virtual) to continue in some manner to prevent a potential increase in juvenile crimes as students were not able to physically attend school as well as activities such as sports (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2020).School safety remains a grave educational concern. While policing efforts, such as metal detectors and locker searches, remain a necessity, greater attention needs to be paid to the emotional climates of schools. Anti-bullying programs, conflict resolution measures, diversity, inclusion and gender equity efforts, and other community-building and social service endeavors must become paramount interventions in the goal to make schools safe, just, and compassionate for all youth.
These efforts, however, are complicated by the pervasive existence of gangs, which encompasses the OJJDP category of "peers." While gangs are not new to American society, the vast increase in their numbers, their blanket coverage of the nation throughout urban and rural areas, their subculture of violence, and their enhanced influence in all facets of American life make them a deadly and powerful force in juvenile crime.
Due to scientific inquiry, however, the OJJDP risk category of "individual" is receiving compelling consideration in the debate over juvenile crime. Through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies, scientists know that the brain of a juvenile is less developed than that of an adult, especially in the frontal lobe, which is responsible for executive, high order functioning, such as memory, planning, and inhibition. Bower (2004) and others (Steinberg, 2012) suggest this condition presents some youth with difficulties in "regulating aggression, long-range planning, mental flexibility, abstract thinking, the capacity to hold in mind related pieces of information, and perhaps moral judgment." In addition to the findings on inherent diminished brain functioning capacity in children, MRI research also suggests that exposure to violent video games and television might impact frontal lobe development and function negatively (Phillips, 2004; Stukel, 2012). Because of these findings, advocates in juvenile justice, such as the Human Rights Watch, have pressured politicians and judicial leaders to reconsider harsh, punitive measures in sentencing juvenile violent offenders. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, by April 2021, forty-seven states had classified seventeen-year-old defendants as juveniles, except in certain circumstances such as previous conviction as an adult. The state of Vermont had raised the maximum juvenile jurisdiction age to eighteen in 2020. Prior to those laws, all seventeen-year-olds were allowed to be tried, arraigned, and sentenced as adults. Disparities in those exceptions have become evident, however, with Black American youth constituting more than half of cases transferred to adult court while less than one-third involve White youth (Burns Institute, 2017, cited in Sawyer, 2019).

While the above risk categories provide some characteristics of juvenile offenders, they do not inevitably lead to crime. Additionally, most of them would be characterized as psychological theories of crime; emphasizing the traits of an individual as the primary factor in criminal causation.

Viewpoints

Child Accountability. Prevailing beliefs about children and criminality can be best viewed as a continuum, with one extreme being the belief that evilness and criminal intent are defined early on, whether by nature (one's biological composition) or nurture (one's upbringing and/or life circumstances). Public policy advocates holding this belief champion imprisonment, and in some cases the death penalty, as the most appropriate mechanism for dealing with the specific offender and sending a message to other potential offenders. The opposing belief system on the continuum would be that children with their brains not fully developed are too immature to be held accountable for their actions to the same degree as adult offenders and that racism, poverty, and other societal ills are also factors in criminality. Improving societal failings and providing services and special rehabilitation experiences for juvenile offenders are more likely to be championed as goals for these public policy advocates. It is clear, however, that reports of violent, multiple murders committed by juvenile offenders, when combined with sensationalized media coverage, shock the public and raise fears about public safety and moral order. Juvenile crime is a complex social problem and competing belief systems and public opinion will continue to be factors in ongoing responses to youthful offenders.

Reform over Punishment. Up until the early nineteenth century, many governments adhered to the traditional belief in Western civilization that there was little difference between an adult and a child, and thus, little difference between an adult criminal and a youthful offender. Those found guilty of a criminal act received the only recognized outcome—punishment. According to Ellen Heath Grinney (1992), children as well as adults faced imprisonment, solitary confinement, branding, fines, whippings, the cutting of ears, and/or death. As ideals of the European Renaissance gained in popularity, new views emerged concerning the innocence of children and their susceptibility to good or bad influences. Judicial and religious leaders began to question the culpability of the youthful offender's parents and community in failing to provide proper guidance, diligence, restraint, and values. Processing children through the adult criminal justice system and punishing them in the adult prisons gradually gave way to beliefs that children should be guided and mentored by judicial agents (probation officers) who would correct the apparent failings of the offender's parents and lead to reform and morality. Rehabilitation, not punishment, was the new goal, and so by the 1850s, reform schools grew in popularity (Grinney, 1992).

Independent Juvenile Court Systems. Since innocence, role modeling, and developmental concerns gained prominence in social policy, exposing youthful offenders to hardened adult criminals during processing and punishment would provide the worst possible outcomes. By the early 1900s, numerous cities and states had developed separate formal juvenile court systems and intervention processes focusing on second chances, rehabilitation, contrition, and reform (Grinney, 1992). In fact, systems were developed to divert youthful offenders from formal labeling as criminals altogether and to hide the accounts of their misdeeds from scrutiny during their subsequent adulthood. If a young person under the age of eighteen is not tried for murder as an adult, for example, and is found "delinquent" (guilty) under state law, the young person can be held in a juvenile correctional facility or on probation until the age of twenty-one. At that time, then, records are sealed and there is no criminal record following them into adulthood.

Programs for Aiding Re-Entry. Despite decades of focus on the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders, youth leave correctional facilities every year and face the daunting task of re-entry into their communities without coordinated social services and public assistance (JustChildren, 2004, p. 5). In an effort to deal with offenders and reduce rates of recidivism, juvenile justice advocates have lobbied Congress to pass federal models of interagency coordination of youth services. The Second Chance Act (P.L. 110-199) was signed into law on April 9, 2008, and was the first federal legislation to authorize grants to government agencies and nonprofit organizations to provide services and support to reduce the rate of recidivism of young people returning to their communities from jail and juvenile facilities.

The Federal Youth Coordination Act (P.L. 109-365), signed into law in October 2006, established the Federal Youth Development Council that is empowered to leverage and coordinate the resources of the different federal agencies that administer youth programs and fund state-level coordination of services as well (Service, 2006; Federal, 2006). Two attempts were made (September 2008 and June 2009) to introduce a bill to amend the original Federal Youth Coordination Act to create the White House Office of National Youth Policy, which would ensure the coordination and effectiveness of services to youth. Congress rejected the bill each time.

Restorative Justice. One interesting trend in juvenile punishment and rehabilitation is the restorative justice movement. Based upon the principal that a criminal act harms both the victim and the community, restorative justice entails mediated, face-to-face meetings between the victim and the offender that are focused on making the victim as whole as possible, economically, socially, and emotionally, and holding the offender accountable and responsible for their actions. Through this process of repairing the harm, the offender learns the consequences of their acts on both the specific victim and the community as a whole. This more personalized rehabilitative process also highlights deficiencies in the life of the offender and provides a means for more direct social service interventions, such as education, job training and employment, mental health and drug treatment.

Punishment over Reform. While much of the framework and belief system of this more lenient view of youthful offenders remains intact in American society, the pendulum has swung back to more rigid beliefs about the innate characteristics of criminality and the necessity of punishment rather than reform. During the mid-1980s, American cities struggled with waves of increased, more violent juvenile crimes that were based in part on the prolific use of crack cocaine and other illegal drugs, the increased availability of guns, and on gang-related violence. In a 1995 article in the Conservative Weekly, public policy analyst John DiIulio coined the word "super-predator" to describe what he believed to be a new breed of juvenile criminal. Described as having no conscience and capable of killing at the slightest whim or provocation, DiIulio attributed this development to being raised in "abject moral poverty . . . surrounded by deviant, delinquent, criminal adults in abusive, violence-ridden, fatherless, Godless, and jobless settings" (Satterthwaite, 1997).

Adult Treatment. Left with apparently unsuccessful alternatives and rocked by the tremendous increase in violent crime by juvenile offenders and by sensational, extensive media coverage of those crimes, states began enacting legislation to adjudicate youthful offenders as adults around 1990. During this time, according to Nagin and his colleagues (2006), "in almost every state, youths who [were] 13 or 14 years of age (or less) [could] be tried and punished as adults for a broad range of offenses, including nonviolent crimes." Despite this trend, according to a NCCD national survey at the time, by a margin of 15 to 1, US voters believed that the "decisions to transfer youth to adult court should be made on a case-by-case basis and not be governed by a blanket policy" (Krisberg & Marchionna, 2007).

Once adjudicated to be an adult, the punishments become harsher for youth offenders as well. Nineteen states enacted the death penalty for juvenile offenders before the United States Supreme Court was asked to rule on the legality of that punishment in 2005. In a 5–4 ruling in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), the Court categorically barred the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed prior to the age of eighteen, finding that such punishment violates the Eighth Amendment of the United State's Constitution prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishments." Seventy-two youthful offenders in twelve states were facing execution at the time of the Court's ruling (Greenhouse, 2005; Lane, 2005; Justices, 2005). Following the Court’s ruling, the seventy-two youths were added to the hundreds of other juveniles nationwide that were facing life in prison. According to a 2008 study by Human Rights Watch, for example, there were 227 individuals serving life sentences without the possibility of parole in California prisons who were sentenced as juveniles under the 1990 legislation. Almost half of these people (45 percent) were accessories to murder rather than the actual murderer themselves, meaning that they served as a lookout or in some other facilitative capacity during a criminal act that caused a death (Fuentes, 2008). Arguably, according to Fuentes and others, this less-culpable population of young people would be excellent candidates for rehabilitative efforts instead of spending their lives in prison without proper services and assistance. The Supreme Court agreed, and on June 25, 2012, in a ruling on Miller v. Alabama, it was decided that a mandatory sentence of life without parole for juveniles convicted of homicide violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. This decision supported the evolving science that proved that the brains of youths were developmental and fundamentally different than adult brains and that trying and sentencing youths in the same manner as adults was unacceptable.

The Supreme Court then also ruled in favor of such leniency for juvenile offenders in 2016 in the case of Montgomery v. Louisiana, which determined that even juvenile offenders whose sentencing of life without parole had already been passed must be given a chance to have that sentence reconsidered on the premise of the Miller v. Alabama ruling. However, a 2021 decision, made by a significantly altered group of justices that consisted of three new appointees since the 2016 ruling, resulted in a change in juvenile justice policy as it found that judges do not have to hold to a requirement of factually deeming a juvenile offender irreparably corrupted to give a sentence of life without parole (Walsh, 2021).

An estimated 4,535 juvenile offenders, or 10 percent of all confined youth, were held in adult jails and prisons in 2017 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2019, cited in Sawyer, 2019). The use of solitary confinement and suicide risk both appear to be higher among youth held in adult facilities (Sawyer, 2019).

Conclusion

With the debate over juvenile justice in flux concerning the punitive, "get tough" perspective, Daniel Nagin and his colleagues (2006) conducted some compelling, sophisticated polling research on public attitudes and the "willingness to pay" (WTP) for incarceration or rehabilitation for serious juvenile offenders. Using cost-benefit analysis, they calculated approximate actual costs and estimates of economic value of juvenile incarceration and various early intervention and rehabilitation programs. Then using "contingent valuation" (CV) methodology, they asked respondents to select their intervention preferences based on these economic projections. Not only were the "reforms that emphasize leniency and rehabilitation . . . justified economically," they were valued by respondents who expressed a willingness to fund them over harsher incarceration options. This view was mirrored in the NCCD national poll in which over 80 percent of respondents believed that "spending on rehabilitative services and treatment for youth will save tax dollars in the long run," and 91 percent believed that such measures would prevent future crime (Krisberg & Marchionna, 2007). Similarly, a 2014 Pew Charitable Trust poll found 79 percent of respondents believed that it is generally acceptable to divert less-serious juvenile offenders away from detention centers and strengthen probation to save money. The public appeared to be expressing a preference for rehabilitative measures except in the face of extreme, violent criminal acts by youthful offenders.

Terms & Concepts

Adjudicated: A determination made by a judge.

Co-offending: Crime committed jointly by two or more individuals.

Contingent valuation: Survey-based economic technique used to value non-market (no specific actual monetary value) resources such as the preservation of the environment or crime prevention.

Cost/benefit analysis: Attribution of best estimates of actual cost and gain/loss in comparison to each other.

Recidivism: The tendency to relapse into a previously undesirable type of criminal behavior; to commit additional, subsequent criminal acts.

Re-entry: Returning to one's home and/or community from incarceration.

Restorative justice: "Repair" of the personal and economic harm caused by a criminal act through mediated face-to-face meetings between the perpetrator and the victim with the goal of making the victim as "whole" as possible under the circumstances.

Retributive justice: Punishment policies aimed at vengeance or payback.

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