Violent Kids Statistics

The overall youth homicide rate dropped in 1997, but the rate among small town and rural youth increased by 38 percent. That statistic highlights my conviction that no longer can any of us believe that we and our children are immune to lethal youth violence, because today almost every teenager in America goes to school with a kid who is troubled enough to become the next killer-the chances are that kid has access to the weapons necessary to do so.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• According to interactional theory, delinquency comes about because of the pattern of interactions between the individual and his or her environment. As bonds to conventional society (e.g., parents and teachers) weaken, social control is reduced and delinquency becomes more likely. For prolonged serious delinquency to emerge, however, association with other delinquent youth and the information of delinquent beliefs are required. Once these delinquent patterns emerge, they have feedback effects, further eroding the person's bond to conventional society. These mutually reinforcing effects create trajectories toward increasing levels of involvement in delinquency. Social network theory is a complementary perspective that focuses on the impact of the social groups, on networks, in which the person is involved. All networks control the behavior of their members and channel that behavior toward consistency with group norms. Prosocial networks (e.g., Boy Scouts) increase the likelihood of conforming behavior; antisocial network (e.g.,gangs) increase the likelihood of antisocial behavior. The more pervasive the network is in a person's life, the more powerful the effect it has on his or her behavior. - Gang membership, Delinquent Peers and Delinquent Behavior, 10/98, NCJ 182990, U.S. Department of Justice, NCJ 171119

• 46% of males, and 26% of females reported they had been in physical fights. (Bureau of Justice, 2001)

• Those in the lower grades reported being in twice as many fights as those in the higher grades. However, there is a lower rate of serious violent crimes in the elementary level than in the middle or high schools. (Bureau of Justice, 2001)

• Teenagers say revenge is the strongest motivation for school shootings. (Bureau of Justice, 2001)

• 86% said, "other kids picking on them, making fun of them or bullying them" causes teenagers to turn to lethal violence in the schools. (Bureau of Justice, 2001)

• 87% said shootings are motivated by a desire to "get back at those who have hurt them." (Bureau of Justice, 2001)

• Students recognize that being a victim of abuse at home or witnessing others being abused at home may cause violence in school. (Bureau of Justice, 2001)

• 61% said students shoot others because they have been victims of physical abuse at home. (Bureau of Justice, 2001)

• 54% said witnessing physical abuse at home can lead to violence in school. (Bureau of Justice, 2001)

• Age 15 is near the peak age of involvement for both gang membership and delinquency.
- Loeber and Farrington, 1998.

• The most serious and chronic offenders often show signs of antisocial behavior as early as the preschool years.
(American an Psychiatric Association, 1994) (was in Juvenile Justice Bulletin: Nov 1998 OJJDP: U.S. Department of Justice)

• Six thousand American students were kicked out of school in the 1996-97 school year for packing weapons.
- John Hendren, "Internet Provides Bomb Blueprints," www.ap.org, April 26, 1999 (Kids Killing Kids)

• One million U.S. students took guns to school in 1998.
- Parents Resource Institute for Drug Addiction

• Juvenile homicide is twice as common today as it was in the mid-1980's. It isn't the brains kids are born with that has changed in half a generation: what has changed in the ubiquity of violence, the easy access to guns and the glorification of revenge in real life and in entertainment.
- "Change Your Brain/Change Your Life-Amen." Newsweek May 3, 1999

• Research by Sheppard Kellam and his colleagues demonstrates that if a 1st grade classroom is well organized and provides clear messages about the behavior, boys' aggressive behavior is tamed.
-The National PTA Magazine 33 Our Children May 1999

• Research shows that patterns of aggression start to become stable and predictable by the time a child is 8 years old.
-The National PTA Magazine 33 Our Children May 1999

• Since 1992 the annual death toll from school shootings has more than doubled. In 1997, 8% of high school students said they had carried a gun to school in the preceding month. That was down 12% from 1993.
- Jerry Adler and Karen Springen, "How to Fight Back, " Newsweek, May 3, 1999, 37.

• Improved medical trauma technology has meant that an injury that would have been fatal just twenty years ago is today much less likely to result in death. For example, in Chicago, where from the mid-1970's to the mid-1990's the number of serious assaults (attacks that could lead to the death of the victim) increased 400% while the homicide rate about the same.
- Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them: James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• Young men are about 10 times as likely to commit murder as young women.
- Bronfenbrenner.U...The State of Americans: This Generation and the Next. NY:Free Press.

• The average age of perpetrators of homicide decreased in the U.S. from 33 years of age in 1965 to 27 years of age in 1993.
- Bronfenbrenner.U...The State of Americans: This Generation and the Next. NY:Free Press.

• Although the overall homicide rate has relatively constant over the last 30 years, the youth homicide rate has risen. Between the mid 80's to the mid 90's the youth homicide rate increased by 168 percent.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• Our juvenile homicide rate is higher in the U.S. than in any other industrialized country. Canada reports a youth homicide rate both one tenth that of the US.
- Fox, J.A. (1996). Trends in Juvenile Violence. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice

• Juvenile arrest for possession of weapons, aggravated assault, robbery, and murder rose more than 50 percent from 1987 to 1996.
- FBI: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (1997). 1996 Uniform Crime Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice

• A sevenfold increase in serious assault by juveniles in the U.S. since WW2.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• The overall youth homicide rate dropped in 1997, but the rate among small town and rural youth increased by 38 percent.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• Each murder committed by an adolescent is matched by a suicide-about twenty-three hundred each year.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• Youth suicide rates skyrocketed 400 percent since 1950.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• Weapons: 1997 CDC survey, revealed that 28% of adolescent boys carried a weapon-gun, a knife, or a club-in the previous month, with 13% carrying a weapon to school in the previous month. They do so primarily because they feel threatened and can't count on adults to protect them.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• With at least one gun in nearly half the households in the country, with two-thirds of our teenagers reporting they could get a gun in an hour, with virtually every kid exposed to vivid movie and television scenarios legitimizing violence, we live in dangerous times.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• Nearly 30% of our boys attending high school carry a potentially lethal weapon around with them as they go about their business in the community, and 12.5 % of our boys have carried a weapon to school.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• The Journal of the American Medical Association: 1.2 million elementary-school-aged latchkey kids had access to guns at home. In 1969 the % of high school students who have cheated on a test increased from 34% to 68%.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• 20% of all high school age boys reported that they were in a physical fight on school property in the past year, and 26% of the boys said their property had been stolen or deliberately damaged on school property.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• 54% of high school boys said that on at least one day in the previous month they felt too unsafe to go to school. Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• The rate of serious depression among American youth has increased from 2% in the 1960Õs to almost 25% in the 1990Õs. These rates of depression are being found equally among affluent and poor youth.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• The odds that children will come to harm increase the further away they are from the care of their biological parents.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• Surveys show that most boys and many girls exhibit some delinquent behavior driving their teenage years, with more than 60% engaging in some combination of aggressive acts, drug abuse, arson, and vandalism. 4% to 7% of kids exhibit chronic patterns of bad behavior and aggression that are serious enough to constitute a diagnosable mental health problem, such as Conduct Disorder. Boys are 3 to 4 times more likely to display this pattern as are girls.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• Only 35% of abused kids with negative and aggressive social maps become violent, according to Dodge.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

• Neglect is more common than abuse: More kids are emotionally abandoned than are directly attacked, physically or emotionally. According to the federal government's National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect, there are almost 900,000 cases of neglect and about 750,000 cases of abuse. Neglect leaves a social vacuum that may send a child looking for connection elsewhere.
- Lost Boys, Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them, James Garbarino, Ph.D.

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