This paper will be emphasizing on juvenile crime and juvenile crime statistics based on the “Juvenile Arrests 2008 Bulletin” from the OJJDP (Puzzanchera, 2009). Juvenile crime refers to the crimes committed juveniles, children under age of eighteen. The offenses committed juveniles, which are referred to as delinquent acts, would be regarded as crimes if they were committed by adults. Ultimately, juveniles are children who need to be helped before it is too late. There are various theories that suggest why juveniles commit delinquent acts, and the biggest factor that these theories suggest, which influences juveniles into committing delinquent acts, is the society itself. The reason behind this is that people in the society are labeled according to their environment, their lack of education and their upbringing. This is the reason that the juvenile justice system serves the purpose of rehabilitating juveniles in order to prevent them becoming from just another career criminal and transform them into a contributing member of society.
When measuring things, the use of statistics becomes necessary, similarly, in order to measure juvenile crime from 2008, it is necessary to take a look at the arrest statistics of that year. However, before summarizing and elaborating the “Juvenile Arrests 2008 Bulletin,” it is very important to understand what arrest statistics actually and what information do they provide. According to Snyder, “[t]he arrest statistics report the number of arrests made by law enforcement agencies in a particular year—not the number of individuals arrested, nor the number of crimes committed” (Snyder, 2003). Back in 2008, juveniles were involved in a variety of property and violent crimes, such as assault, motor vehicle theft, murder, rape, and robbery. In comparison to the juvenile arrests in 1999, 2.11 million juveniles were arrested, which signifies a 16% decline in the number of juvenile arrests.
The fact that there was a decline in juvenile crime and juvenile arrests is proof of the effectiveness of law enforcement during that year. Since 2007, the rate of juvenile violent crime arrests fell by 2% to 16%, which was lesser that the rate of juvenile property crimes arrests, which was 26%. The 10% rate of juvenile murder arrests was 74% lesser than the peak rate of juvenile arrests in 1993, but it was still 17% than the juvenile murder arrest rate in 2004. Moreover, the rate of juvenile aggravated assault arrests in 2008 was just 1% more than the rate of juvenile murder arrests in the same year. In fact, the rate of arrests for aggravated assaults and rapes committed by juveniles in 2008 was the lowest since the 1980s, while on the contrary. In 2008, there was an increase in juvenile portion of robbery, where the rates of arrests had increased by 46% since 2004.
The above statistics are an example of how the statistics of juvenile crime keep on fluctuating throughout the years. For instance, in comparison to the years prior to the 90s, the rate of juvenile drug abuse violations for considerably higher (“43% for males and 51% for females”) (Puzzanchera, 2009), even though not as high as the peak rates between 1996 and 1998. There are many reasons behind this increase and steadiness in the rates of juvenile drug abuse violations since 2002. Since 2000s, drugs have become rather popular, and people, both adults and juveniles, seem to use drugs for various reasons. Juveniles, in particular, have been using drugs as means of experiencing pleasuring and also as a means of making money by selling them. Therefore, even though the rate of drug abuse violations had slightly dropped and then remained stable, it cannot be expected that it will be going down anytime soon. As long as the need for drugs remains, and as long as drugs are easily accessible to juveniles, juveniles will continue using drugs and committing drug-related crimes. Nonetheless, it is shameful that the number of juveniles using and selling drugs is greater than adults.
Since 2007, there was a 3% increase in rate of juvenile burglary arrests raising it to 27%. Another trend that seemed notable in the “Juvenile Arrests 2008 Bulletin” was that the arrest rate for black juveniles in 2008, arrested for robbery, was 10 times greater than that of white juveniles. The contrasting trend of black vs. white juvenile arrests seems to be similar in arrest rates of other juvenile crimes of 2008 as well. Another notable trend is that in 2008, is that 17% of juveniles arrested for violent crimes were females, and the rate of female arrests for violent crimes seems to be more than that of male juveniles. It seems that juvenile females seem to be involved in offensive crimes more than male juveniles and this trend tends to extend to adult females as well. Even the arrest rate for burglary by female juveniles (51%) is also greater than that of male juveniles (43%).
As far as the assessment plan and tracking of juvenile arrests is concerned, in the past years, the U.S. had severe problems regarding juvenile delinquency cases. Based on the trends of crimes between1980-1994, it seems that the number of crimes committed by juveniles is increasing. The Juvenile Arrests Bulletin has also revealed that numerous entities were analyzed in order to disclose the information contained in the bulletin. The growth rate of all the crimes are being monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the figures in the bulletin are certified by them. In conclusion, since these statistics are from 2008, the rate of juvenile crimes and arrests may certainly not be the same. Nonetheless, hopefully there will come a day when juvenile crime will no longer exist, and juveniles will remain as contributing members of the society rather than becoming criminals.
References
Snyder, H. N. (2003, Dec). Juvenile arrests 2001. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/201370.pdf
Puzzanchera, C. (2009, Dec). Juvenile arrests 2008. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/228479.pdf
