Juvenile Killers

Homicidal Incidents

A recently published report by Howard Snyder used data submitted to the FBI from 1980 through 1999 to analyze juvenile involvement in murders in the United States over a 20-year period. The exact number of killings committed by youth every year is unknown because the FBI has no information on the killers in a large percentage of cases. For example, such data was not available in about 36% of the murders committed in 1999.

About 1,040 juveniles are known to have been involved in the murders of 15,530 people in 1999. In 59% of these cases, the youth appeared to act alone; in the remaining 41% of murders, 9% involved another juvenile, and 32% involved an adult. The proportion of homicides by juveniles that involved adult offenders increased significantly over the 20-year period of analysis.

Available data suggests that in 1999, murders by juveniles fell to their lowest level since the mid-1980s.

The decrease in murders by juveniles was largely attributed to a decline in the number of murders of acquaintances and to a lesser extent, strangers; the annual number of family members slain by youth under 18 years old stayed fairly constant over the 20-year period. In 70% of murders by juveniles, victims were killed with a firearm; in 25% of cases, another type of weapon was used, such as a knife or blunt object; in the remaining 5%, the juveniles' hands or feet were used.