Juvenile Crime and Victimization - Homicide

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, death rates from homicide doubled from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, fell in the mid-1980s, rose again in the late 1980s, then declined sharply through 2001, reaching an overall rate of 7.1 per one hundred thousand people, including those who died in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But beginning in the mid-1980s the number of teens involved in homicide as either victims and perpetrators rose dramatically. In 2001 homicides were the fourth-leading cause of death in children younger than five years old; the fourth-leading cause for children five to fourteen; and the second-leading cause in fifteen- to twenty-four-year-olds. The youngest victims were more likely to know the perpetrator than adult victims were. More than one-quarter of the victims of gang-related murders were under the age of eighteen. Between 1976 and 1999 children made up 9.8% of the victims of homicide; 10.7% of offenders were under eighteen.

Homicide rates among teens vary dramatically by race. In 2000 young African-Americans of both sexes ages fifteen to twenty-four were six times more likely (20.5 per one hundred thousand) than young whites (3.3 per one hundred thousand) to be murdered. Young African-American men are particularly vulnerable. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 85.7 out of every one hundred thousand African-American males ages fifteen to twenty-four were victims of homicide, down from a high of 137.1 per one hundred thousand in 1990 (National Vital Statistics Reports, vol. 52, no. 9, November 7, 2003).

Trends in Gang Homicides

The number of youth gang homicides declined in the 1990s, but the trends varied by city and also varied between the early and later parts of the decade, according to the OJJDP report "Youth Gang Homicides in the 1990s" (March 2001). From 1990 to 1996 the total number of homicides decreased by 256 (almost 15%) in the 408 cities surveyed, from 1,748 to 1,492 incidents.

Although the total number of gang-related homicides was down even further in 2002 (1,232), 91 out of 142 cities reported at least one gang-related homicide. Los Angeles and Chicago reported more gang-related homicides (655) than the other 89 cities combined (577). In those two cities approximately half the homicides were gang-related.