Delinquency and Violence

The Extent of Violent Delinquency in the United States

Delinquency is an illegal act committed by a minor, and what is known about delinquency has been gleaned from a number of different sources. The first source of data on delinquency is the annual arrest data collated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from most law enforcement agencies in the United States. Recent arrest data show that law enforcement agencies made an estimated 2.14 million juvenile arrests in 2005. In terms of juvenile arrests for violent behavior, there were 95,300 made for violent index crimes-murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault-and a further 247,900 arrests made for other assaults. What this means is that in real terms only 4.4% of juvenile arrests were for serious violent offenses, and a further 11.5% were for simple assaults or assaults where no weapon was used.

There are advantages and disadvantages to using official sources of data. The advantage is that one can get a sense of the trends in arrests over time because the data are collated annually. So in terms of violent delinquency the trends of the past two decades illustrate that arrests for serious violent crime peaked in the early 1990s, with the juvenile arrest rate for murder peaking in 1991 at 13.1 per 100,000. Since then, juvenile arrests for violence have decreased markedly, the arrest rate for murder being 3.8 per 100,000 in 2005. There have been similar declines in arrests for other serious violent offenses. For instance, between 1996 and 2005, juvenile arrests for rape declined 25%, while there were declines of 34% and 20% for robbery and aggravated assault, respectively. In terms of arrest then, one can conclude from the available data that violent delinquency has decreased from its high water mark in the early 1990s, though there is a perception that the United States is poised for another increase. While arrest statistics give one a general idea of the trends in violent delinquency, there are a number of drawbacks with respect to relying solely on official data. In the first place the data only count the total number of arrests, which does not account for an individual being arrested multiple times in a year, nor for an individual arrested once, but charged with [Page 177]multiple offenses. More importantly, official data do not count those who committed illegal acts but who were never arrested.

...