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Youth violence has become a vast subject of research, especially since the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, a seminal American crime event. School shootings make headlines, but some advocates have long argued that American schools—populated by 55 million students in grades K-12 and another 15 million in colleges and universities–are very safe, despite the deserved attention given to mass murders at Columbine and other schools, including the April 2007 shooting by an alienated student on the Virginia Tech campus that left 33 people dead. This source guide includes a wide array of contacts, from government and advocacy groups to experts on gangs and the post-traumatic stress disorder that typically follows school shootings. The website of the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, linked below, has a trove of reports, studies and statistics on the subjects. The federal Centers for Disease Control is another good place to start for basic background facts. The CDC’s Youth Violence Prevention webpage, linked below, points out, for example, that a quarter of American students report gang activities at their schools, and that 38 percent of all public schools reported at least one violent incident in 2006.
Nashville police report that two young burglars covered their intent by talking religion. Police said if someone answered the door, one of the youths would talk about religion. If no one was home, the residence was burglarized, The AP reports.
Link: AP
Police arrested a 19-year-old and a 17-year-old and charged them with aggravated burglary. The Tennessean [...]
An Ohio teenager tried to pull off a sweet deal by ordering more than $37,000 worth of candy online and charging the bill to his former high school, the Associated Press reported.
Read the Story here.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has appointed an outside judge to review potentially thousands of cases that were handled by Luzerne County juvenile court judge Mark Ciavarella dating back to 2003. The Wilkes Barre Times Leader said the high court wants to ensure a thorough review is conducted of all cases to determine whether a “travesty of juvenile justice” [...]
Two class action lawsuits have been filed against two Pennsylvania judges and others who are alleged to have participated in a scheme to place juveniles at two detention centers in exchange for payoffs, reports the Wilkes Barre Times Leader. Judges Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan pleaded guilty Thursday to charges they accepted more than [...]
University of Pennsylvania law professor Anita Allen comments on The Daily Beast website about the prospects of imprisonment for Jordan Brown, the 11-year-old Pennsylvania boy who shot and killed his father’s pregnant fiancé. She writes, “Though sending an 11-year-old to live with rapists, bank robbers, and murderers might seem crazy, it happens, simply because America has no [...]
Even though the Texas Youth Commission’s incarcerated population has dropped by almost half in two years, the annual cost of locking up juvenile offenders has climbed to almost $99,000 per inmate — a 66 percent jump since 2006, says the Austin American-Statesman. With a tight state budget and a tough economy, legislative leaders say that is [...]
Washington, D.C., officials are compiling a list of 60 of the most serious juvenile offenders in detention and will share information on their backgrounds with police and some community groups before allowing the youths to return home, especially to high-crime neighborhoods, the Washington Post reports. Under the program announced by Mayor Adrian Fenty, organizations such as Peaceoholics [...]
State and local anticrime programs will get another big infusion of federal aid under the new appropriations bill approved by Congress for the current fiscal year. It was signed today by President Obama. There will be $512 million for “formula” grants under the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program and another $178.5 million for discretionary (earmarked) grants, [...]
When the clock strikes 11 p.m. in Lowell, Mass., almost nobody under 17 is allowed on the city streets without parents. Those caught violating the curfew are subject to jail or a $300 fine. Now the state’s highest court will decide whether the curfew, enacted 14 years ago as juvenile crime rates soared, violates the [...]
Newsweek reports on the myriad problems of the more than 25,000 foster youth in the United States who “age out” of the social welfare system at age 18 every year, with no family or support network to rely on. Within two years of emancipation, half of Los Angeles County’s foster youth will be unemployed, one [...]
A new government-funded study, “The Code of the Street and African-American Adolescent Violence,” indicates that economic disadvantage, separation from mainstream society and racial discrimination encountered by some young blacks may lead to anti-social attitudes and to violent behavior. The research for the federal Office of Justice Programs was conducted in Philadelphia by Elijah Anderson. (The [...]
If someone had paid attention to the teenagers committing crimes years ago they might not be in prison today. That’s what adult prisoners tell Verna Wyatt of the Nashville victims rights group You Have the Power, The Tennessean reports. She is unhappy about pending budget cuts that may eliminate the jobs of probation officers, prosecutors, and others who work [...]
Most children who enter group probation homes in Los Angeles County remain in lives of crime and drugs years later, says a new Rand Corporation study. The bleak findings indicate a need to revamp the county’s juvenile justice programs and increase funding, says the report published in the April issue of the American Journal of Public Health. [...]
The anti-violence group Peaceoholics said it will send volunteer ex-offenders to the Anacostia and Minnesota Avenue Metro stations in Washington, D.C., a couple of times a week because of altercations among youths on their way home from school or nightclubs, reports the city’s Post. “We can’t rely on [D.C. police] or the city to deal [...]
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court will give a judge the discretion to overturn the cases of as many as 1,200 juveniles sentenced by a judge who admitted taking payments from detention centers to which he sentenced some of them, reports the Philadelphia Inquirer. Calling the unanimous order a first step toward restoring public confidence in the justice system, [...]
Although Jessie Rankins isn’t a household name, his crime was among the most notorious murders in Chicago history. Just a scrawny boy in 1994, he and a friend abducted 5-year-old Eric Morse and dropped him to his death out a 14th-floor window at a public housing high-rise. Eric had refused to steal candy for them, [...]
A new report by the Nation Right to Counsel Committee examines evidence that jurisdictions across the country are failing to provide competent counsel to needy defendants. The report finds that “indigent defense systems are struggling. Due to funding shortfalls, excessive caseloads, and a host of other problems, many are truly failing.”
To read the report, click [...]
On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold entered their Colorado high school and killed 12 of their classmates, then turned their guns on themselves. Ten years later, former Los Angeles Times reporter Jeff Kass’s book, “Columbine: A True Crime story, a victim, the killers and the nation’s search for answers,” looks back at the [...]
At least 73 U.S. inmates — most of them minorities — who were sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison for crimes committed when they were 13 or 14, the Equal Justice Initiative, a Alabama nonprofit, tells CNN. Only 19 states punish children under 14 with life sentences without parole, says the organization, which [...]
Some juvenile justice advocates are concerned that the impending Supreme Court challenge to life sentences for juveniles may fail because not enough states have abolished such penalties. When the high court prohibited executions of juveniles in 2002, justices cited states that had taken similar actions. That has not happened on a widespread basis with respect [...]
