Los Angeles Times
It's Violence by All, Not Just Teen Violence
Tuesday, August 8, 2000
Murders: Despite the publicity, the rash of killings isn't a trend.
Teen killings have been front-page news all too often in Southern
California. Three times in the past few weeks, we have read of horrifying
deaths with teenage suspects, including a murder of four in Pico Rivera,
apparently sparked by family conflict over dating rules.
Each of these killings--of two young teens in La Crescenta, of an
elderly woman in Rialto, allegedly by a teenage girl, and of the Pico
Rivera family--is an individual tragedy worth sustained community concern
and sadness. But the succession of teen homicide stories raises broader
questions as well: Do we have an epidemic of juvenile killings? What is
it about teenagers today that provokes them to such senseless slaughters?
What can we do to prevent our kids from becoming predators? How can we
protect teenagers from being murdered?
On these general worries, the available facts are reassuring: There is
no big increase in juvenile killing in California or in the nation. This
generation of teens is no more homicide-prone than many other age groups
in society, and younger teens are much less deadly than young adults.
Finally, the most effective way to reduce teen violence is not a
prevention program targeted at teens but alteration in the general social
environment. American lethal violence is a problem of all age groups
rather than a risk limited to adolescence.
To the extent that homicide statistics can ever be comforting, the
hard data available on juvenile killings should calm citizen fears. After
a nasty run-up in the late 1980s, the rate at which kids were arrested
for killings in the United States fell by half between 1994 and 1996.
Homicide arrests started dropping earlier in California and fell further.
Between 1991 and 1998, the rate of homicide arrests of offenders under 18
fell just over 60%. The homicide rate for juveniles fell 50% further in
California than for adults. The Los Angeles Police Department probably
will end 2000 with about half as many juvenile homicide arrests as at the
beginning of the 1990s.
Further, the types of killings now in the news are not evidence that
the down trend has been reversed. It is youth gang shootings that often
provoke counter-violence, not family murders or random beating deaths.
And the assortment of isolated cases from July probably will not inspire
"copycat" behavior by other teens in the pattern of school shootings. If
the Menendez brothers and their made-for-television movie did not start a
wave of family violence, neither should the Pico Rivera rampage. The run
of killings this summer in Southern California are tragedies but not
trends.
And it is important to understand that lethal violence in the United
States is not the special province of teens. There are some crimes, such
as fire-setting and auto theft, that are concentrated among very young
offenders. About half of all arson arrests involve suspects under 18, and
15-year-olds are more than three times as likely as 23-year-olds to be
arrested for auto theft. But the rate at which 15-year-olds commit
homicide is less than half that of 23-year-olds, and offenders under 18
are responsible for only about one in 10 criminal homicides.
There is one further respect in which teen violence is best seen as
part of a much larger picture. Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia University and I
have been comparing rates of homicide arrest over the teen years in four
countries that have very different general levels of homicides: Great
Britain, Canada, Australia and the United States. Teens account for about
10% of homicide arrests in each country, and the rate increase from age
12 through age 18 is similar also when you compare each nation's
teenagers to that nation's adults. Statistically, the only reason U.S.
teens commit more homicides is that the United States has higher homicide
rates generally. The teenage slice of the homicide pie is no greater--it
is just that the U.S. pie is so much bigger.
The best way to prevent teen violence is to change the American
environment to reduce homicide risks at all ages. We should not try to
fine-tune deaths from one age group. To the extent that we make the
United States a less dangerous environment for everybody, the horror of
teen killing will decline as well.
Franklin E. Zimring Is a Professor of Law at Uc Berkeley's Boalt Hall and Author of "American Youth Violence" (Oxford University Press, 1998)