Juvenile Crime: A Research Perspective
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The March 21 COSSA breakfast seminar, Juvenile Crime: A Research Perspective, brought the findings of criminal justice research to an audience of over 90 congressional and federal agency officials. The event, planned in close collaboration with the American Society of Criminology, was attended by National Institute of Justice Director Jeremy Travis, Bureau of Justice Statistics Director Jan Chaiken, and staff members of both the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
Richard Rosenfeld, professor of sociology at the University of St. Louis-Missouri, gave an overview of youth violence, its causes, and prevention. Rosenfeld told the audience that around 1985 rates of violent offending and victimization soared, concentrated disproportionately among young urban African-American males. He said it is important to note that in the years immediately preceding crime rates in this demographic group had experienced declines. The magnitude of the increase, which was uncoupled from trends among adults, led to the get-tough on kids policies of the last decade, he said. Rosenfeld cited criminologist Al Blumstein’s hypothesis that this increase -- and subsequent decrease -- can be linked to the rise and decline of drug markets, particularly crack cocaine. An escalating arm race ensued, as those in the crack trade armed themselves for protection. Noting that non-gun homicide and serious assault rates have remained flat, Rosenfeld urged policy makers to link youth crime and firearms policies.
Rosenfeld said that research has shown the effects of incarceration on the rates of youth violence to be small. He said that the great majority of young offenders sent to prison are back on the streets when they are still in the active phase of their criminal careers. The research on the impact of this growing population of ex-inmates in already distressed communities shows a “prisonization of the streets” effect. The attitudes, behaviors, and characteristics of prison are replicated in the neighborhoods. Rosenfeld said that while the recent economic expansion can explain some of the decline in violent crime, this is a cyclical rather than structural societal change. He said more aggressive policing strategies, such as those in New York City, have been shown to be most effective when the crime rates were already beginning to subside and when the community is open to a more aggressive enforcement strategy. Rosenfeld cited an NIJ-supported study that found this policing method most effective when it is highly targeted. He concluded by saying that the role of the federal government is in research and evaluation, coordinating local initiatives, and transplanting successful practices from one community to another.
The rise in juvenile violence, suggested Simon Singer, professor of sociology at SUNY-Buffalo, is due in part to a decline in juvenile justice. It is wrong to describe juvenile justice as a system, he said; rather it is a set of loosely connected subsystems that place the concerns of the state and the juvenile secondary to bureaucracy and other interests. Singer asked the audience to consider juvenile justice as a football field, only in this game there are many teams aiming for a multitude of goal posts, plays and players constantly change, players are affected by the roar of the crowd, and no one is keeping score. In the juvenile justice system, success is not based on declining recidivism rates, but on an agency’s ability to avoid crisis, Singer stated. Issues of confidentiality of juvenile records hinder accountability, he said.
Singer discussed his research on a New York state law that lowered the eligible age of criminal responsibility to 13 for murder and 14 for many other violent offenses. According to Singer, only one in four eligible offenders was convicted in adult criminal court, with the rest either transferred to juvenile court or having their charges dismissed. Such waiver legislation, he argued, only increases the variation in how offenders are treated; in many counties he found black juvenile offenders more likely to be held criminally responsible than whites. These new legal avenues for official discretion, disparities, and discrimination provide new sources for sensing injustice and new justification to commit more serious offenses, Singer contended. In concluding his remarks, Singer urged a more unified juvenile justice system that places treatment and punishment on the same continuum. He also called for a federal role in uniting the juvenile justice system behind shared goals and sponsoring objective research and evaluation of programs.
Denise Gottfredson discussed the effects of school environments on youth behavior, and highlighted the findings of a report to Congress on the effectiveness of crime violence prevention programs that she and her colleagues at the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of Maryland recently completed. Gottfredson cited four prevention strategies that work: build the school’s capacity to initiate and sustain innovation; clarify and communicate norms about behavior and improve the consistency of enforcement; focus on a wide range of social competency skills through comprehensive instructional programs; and teach self-management skills for high-risk youth.
Some prevention efforts that Gottfredson’s research has found not to work include: counseling students in a peer group context, as these groupings often amplify or reinforce norms for delinquent behavior; offering youths alternative activities, such as recreation, that are not part of larger, more potent prevention programs; and conducting instructional programs that focus on information dissemination, fear arousal, moral appeal, and affective education programs. Regarding after-school recreation programs, Gottfredson said that while the idea is appealing, research has shown that they may increase the risk for delinquency, as students most in need choose not to participate. Some programs have been found to increase risk-taking and impulsive behavior in those that do.
Gottfredson said she sought to leave the policy makers in attendance with five key points: schools have great potential for reducing crime both during the school day and beyond; prevention can work, particularly when it is targeted and sustained; schools generally adopt strategies that are either untested or unsuccessful; schools most in need of prevention and intervention are the ones least capable of providing those services; and Congress should appropriate more money for evaluation and only fund programs that have been proven successful.
In the lively discussion period that followed, many in the audience, particularly the congressional staff, shared questions and opinions on issues such as honor codes, boot camps, racial disparities, and accountability in juvenile justice.