SANTA CRUZ — The murder rate in Los Angeles is up. And a new report from Choices for Youth and the California Wellness Foundation suggests why -- youth violence. "This is an epidemic" involving youths ages 10 through 17, said Choices for Youth director Laurie Kappe.
Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Ronald Bergmann urged more "aggressive curfew and truancy enforcement" to take "young victims" and "possible [suspects] off the streets." Deputy City Atty. Anthony Koutris called the problem of kids carrying guns "overwhelming."
But reports on the LAPD's official Web page detailing several hundred homicides tell a different story. Even amid the increase in murders this year in the city, the number of juveniles committing homicide is down sharply. Barring a calamitous next two weeks, fewer L.A. juveniles under age 18 will be arrested in homicide cases in 2002 than the 49 arrested last year, and far fewer than the average of 150 arrested annually in the 1990s.
The relatively low number of juvenile arrests does not stem from aggressive curfew enforcement. The LAPD's own studies, as well as others', show that curfews don't reduce crime or protect youths. Police reports show that 47 L.A. juveniles have been murdered so far this year -- most, apparently, by grown-ups. The suspects listed on the LAPD Web site accused of murdering youths under age 18 are all adults.
Los Angeles murder suspects, overall, are considerably older than in the past. In the 1990s, two-thirds of the murder suspects were under age 25; in 2002, fewer than half are.
Similarly, police and community leaders in Oakland, which is also suffering from a sharp rise in homicides, blamed youth violence. Yet, as in L.A., police tabulations show that murder suspects in Oakland are older. Only three teenagers have been arrested in murder cases in that city this year, far below the average of 10 to 12 a year in the 1990s.
The reflex to blame youths stems from the conventional theory that, as UCLA management professor James Q. Wilson puts it, "a 'critical mass' of young persons ... creates an explosive increase in the amount of crime." This is not true today, if it ever was. Correlations of crime rates and the proportion of America's population ages 14-24 -- the "crime-prone" age group -- over the last three decades show that years and states with higher percentages of young males suffered considerably fewer murders and other violent crimes.
