The Unprecedented Epidemic in Youth Violence

The epidemic of youth violence that began in the mid-1980s has been demographically concentrated among black male youths: the homicide-commission rate for this group increased by a factor of about 4.5. A number of patterns stand out: one of every four or five serious crimes of violence, and one of ten homicides, are committed by juveniles who are less than age eighteen; the proportion of arrests for violent crimes, however, that involved juveniles (20 percent) was about the same in 1994 as in 1965. A decline in the adolescent population has been balanced by an increase in rates of arrest. Youths kill more often than they are killed, and there is a great deal of crossover killing (in both directions) between adolescents and older people. The claim that the explosion in youth violence can be attributed to "superpredators," with each cohort having greater prevalence of such fiends than the last, does not accord well with available data. There is a clear indication of increased gun availability during the epidemic: every category of homicide, as well as other violent crimes, exhibited an increase in gun use. While the sizes of successive youth cohorts are increasing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, that is not a sound basis for predicting that the volume of youth violence will also increase.