9.1 Trends in Youth Offending

Since the early 1990s, America has witnessed an increase in the fear of youth crime (Benekos, 2004).  Sensationalized media exposure in the 1990s facilitated the public’s fear of juvenile offenders and “superpredators”, which resulted in “get tough” legislation and a perceived need to “do something” about youth crime (Myers, 2001).  Juvenile courts were criticized for their inability to control youth crime, and as a result, policies shifted from rehabilitation to the punishment of juvenile offenders (Feld, 2001). This shift included an increase in the number of states that adopted new legislation or revised their previous statutes to facilitate the transfer of youthful offenders from juvenile court to criminal “adult” court to be tried as adults (Snyder, 2006).

Given recent media coverage around surging violence in the United States, you may be surprised to learn that youth arrests for violent crime have fallen dramatically over the last 15 years; in fact, from 2006 to the present, such arrests have fallen 67 percent. Moreover, a declining proportion of all youth arrests involve a violent offense. Take a look at the below chart created by the Office for Justice Programs, which shows a positive trend over nearly two decades.