Experts: Society's worst fears about young criminals were wrong

Youth today were supposed to be brutal, a generation of cold-hearted kids with a penchant for crime even their prolific older siblings couldn’t touch. The prediction of super predators was hatched a decade ago in response to a growing population of juvenile criminals. But like most nightmares, the fear of their coming faded with time.

Today, juveniles here and nationally are arrested in far fewer numbers and account for a smaller percentage of arrests than a decade ago. Across the country, crime at schools has plummeted. Fewer children were murdered in 2003 than 10 or even 20 years ago. Experts point to a wide range of possible reasons. In the days since the crack epidemic peaked, after-school and anti-delinquency programs have proliferated. Juvenile justice has become both harsher and more smartly focused on the most dangerous offenders. And some say the mid-’90s vision of youth-gone-wild was flawed to begin with, a cracked analysis that played to some of society’s more baseless fears. “People focused on two things,” said David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College. “That the nation was producing a new breed of stone killers worse than ever seen.

And that in years to come, the nation would have more people in these age groups. “What happened in fact was the kids were nowhere near as toxic as people wanted to believe,” he said. Jackson County’s family court experienced its busiest year in 1997. That year, law enforcement made over 5,000 referrals to the court. Since then, that number has declined every year save one, dropping about 40 percent overall. But even at the high-water mark, authorities didn’t see an overwhelming rush of violent offenders, said Dennis Atherton, the court’s director of assessment and development and a 35-year veteran.

Violent offenses consistently accounted for less than 10 percent of the referrals, he said. “I don’t think we’ve ever gone above 12 or 13 kids (a year) arrested for homicide,” Atherton said. “We did experience an increase in the ’80s and ’90s, but certainly not what was predicted.” Other metropolitan area indicators suggest a similar decline in juvenile crime. During the current decade, juvenile court loads in Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas also have trended down. So, too, have juvenile arrests in Kansas City, from about 3,400 in 2000 to 2,100 last year. The local numbers keep with a trend nationwide, according to the Justice Department’s 2006 National Report on Juvenile Offenders and Victims due out later this month.

The numbers refute the super-predator theory, which presumed both an increase in the teen population and an increase in teen crime. One federal analysis in the early 1990s, which projected the rise in crime rates that started in the ’80s would continue another decade, called for a doubling of already high teen crime numbers by now. Instead, both adult and youth crime fell. “The crack epidemic sparked a lot of new drug-dealing groups and those drug-dealing groups committed a lot of violence,” said John Jay’s Kennedy. “…The crack epidemic, although it certainly is not over, did recede. And the second thing that happened is people learned that this is a foolish way to live.” But the wane of crack doesn’t explain everything, some experts say. “When we’re looking at a national number, there’s not one answer,” said Melissa Sickmund, senior research associate at the National Center for Juvenile Justice, which put together the federal study. “You’re looking to explain all the little local patterns.” Sickmund, for one, points out that the economic boon in the mid-’90s meant more money could be thrown at the problem.

Task forces sprang up and authorities started seeking successful programs to curtail juvenile crime. Groups such as the local Heart of America United Way received big federal money for after-school and other programs to combat delinquency. At the same time, federal officials offered more money to states to throw the book at serious and repeat juvenile offenders, but also to consider prison alternatives for less-incorrigible youth. By the mid-’90s, more states sought ways to automatically transfer juveniles to adult court. “Those reforms have made the system more adversarial, and the stakes are greater for the juveniles and their attorneys,” said John Fritz, supervisor of the juvenile division at the Johnson County district attorney’s office. “Overall, I think it’s been a success. It’s certainly given the courts and prosecutors more flexibility.”

Cultural changes happened, too. Parents became more aware of crime. Schools endorsed zero-tolerance and anti-bullying policies. Making a threat at school became a serious offense. “It isn’t the same as it was,” said Gene Johnson, an associate superintendent for the Shawnee Mission School District. “What students could casually say 10 years ago, they know that if they get into those kinds of conversations (today), they’re going to be facing pretty dire consequences.” Some question if the mid-’90s theories, proffered by criminologists such as John DiIulio, were anything other than alarmist. “You had a small number of criminologists who were making statements in the media,” said Jeff Roth a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania. “Most of the profession was a whole lot more cautious.”

John Shultz
14 March 2006

http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/nation/14095747.htm

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