In 2021, there were about 123,000 serious violent crimes committed by youths between the ages of 12 and 17 in the United States, an increase from the year before. However, this is still a significant decrease from 1994 levels, when violent crimes committed by youths hit a peak at over 1.05 million serious crimes.

Youth and crime

According to the most recent data, criminal youths in the United States continue to participate in violent crimes each year. In 2022, there were over 1,000 murder offenders between the ages of 13 and 16 in the United States. Studies have also shown that crimes are reported against children at U.S. schools, with students aged between 12 and 14 years found more likely to be victims of violent crime and theft. However, the number of adolescent violent crime victims in the U.S. far surpasses the number of adolescent perpetrators. The number of adolescent victims has also declined significantly since the early 1990s, following the national downward trend of violent crime.

Overall downward trends

There is not only a downward trend in the number of violent crimes committed by youths, but also in the share of crimes involving youths. On a national level, the crime rate has also decreased in almost every state, showing that the country is becoming safer as a whole.

In 2021, around 9.7 percent of serious violent crime cases in the United States involved teenagers, an increase from the previous year, where 7.5 percent of serious violent crimes involved teenagers. The share of serious violent crimes involving children between 12 and 17 years old reached a peak in 1994, at 25.1 percent.

The research team collected data on homicide, robbery, and assault offending from 1984-2006 for youth 13 to 24 years of age in 91 of the 100 largest cities in the United States (based on the 1980 Census) from various existing data sources. Data on youth homicide perpetration were acquired from the Supplementary Homicide Reports (SHR) and data on nonlethal youth violence (robbery and assault) were obtained from the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). Annual homicide, robbery, and assault arrest rates per 100,000 age-specific populations (i.e., 13 to 17 and 18 to 24 year olds) were calculated by year for each city in the study. Data on city characteristics were derived from several sources including the County and City Data Books, SHR, and the Vital Statistics Multiple Cause of Death File. The research team constructed a dataset representing lethal and nonlethal offending at the city level for 91 cities over the 23-year period from 1984 to 2006, resulting in 2,093 city year observations.

In 2023, around **** percent of persons between the ages of 12 and 17 years old in the United States experienced one or more violent victimizations. This was a decrease from the previous year, when **** percent of children in the same age group were the victim of a violent crime.

In 2019, there were six deaths by homicide per 100,000 of the population in the United States, compared to 5.9 deaths by homicide in the previous year. This is an increase from 1950, when there were 5.1 deaths by homicide per 100,000 resident population in the United States. However, within the provided time period, the death rate for homicide in the U.S. was highest in 1980, when there were 10.4 deaths by homicide per 100,000 of the population in the United States.

Homicides in the United States

The term homicide is used when a human being is killed by another human being. Criminal homicide takes several forms, for example murder; but homicide is not always a crime, it also includes affirmative defense, insanity, self-defense or the execution of convicted criminals. In the United States, youth homicide has especially been seen as a problem of urban areas, due to poverty, limited adult supervision, involvement in drug and gang activities, and school failure. Both homicide rates and suicide rates in the U.S. among people aged 20 to 24 and teenagers aged 15 to 19 have vastly increased since 2001.

Content

This dataset contains information on the number of juvenile arrests in the US per crime category for each year between 1995 and 2016. The number of arrests is further broken down by sex, age group, and race for each crime category. This data is collected by the FBI as part of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

Acknowledgements

Source: FBI Crime Data Explorer Image by @anneniuniu on Unsplash

This study obtained information on youth-serving organizations around the country that provide constructive activities for youth in the after-school and evening hours. It was carried out in collaboration with seven national youth-serving organizations: Boys and Girls Clubs of America, Boy Scouts of America, Girls Incorporated, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., National Association of Police Athletic Leagues, National 4-H Council and United States Department of Agriculture 4-H and Youth Development Service, and YMCA of the U.S.A. The research involved a national survey of affiliates and charter members of these organizations. Respondents were asked to provide information about their programs for the 1993-1994 school year, including summer 1994 if applicable. A total of 1,234 questionnaires were mailed to the 658 youth-serving organizations in 376 cities in October 1994. Survey data were provided by 579 local affiliates. Information was collected on the type of building where the organization was located, the months, days of the week, and hours of operation, number of adults on staff, number and sex of school-age participants, number of hours participants spent at the program location, other participants served by the program, and characteristics of the neighborhood where the program was located. Questions were also asked about the types of contacts the organization had with the local police department, types of crimes that occurred at the location in the school year, number of times each crime type occurred, number of times the respondent was a victim of each crime type, if the offender was a participant, other youth, adult with the program, adult from the neighborhood, or adult stranger, actions taken by the organization because crimes occurred, and crime prevention strategies recommended and adopted by the organization. Geographic information includes the organization's stratum and FBI region.

These data are part of NACJD's Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped by NACJD for release, but not checked or processed except for the removal of direct identifiers. Users should refer to the accompanying readme file for a brief description of the files available with this collection and consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed. The research project has tested a possible explanation for the Great American Crime Decline of the 1990s and especially 2000s: the increasing rates at which psychotropic drugs are prescribed, especially to children and adolescents. Psychotropic drugs are often prescribed to youth for mental health conditions that involve disruptive and impulsive behaviors and learning difficulties. The effects of these drugs are thus expected to lead to the decrease in the juveniles' involvement in delinquency and violence. The effects of two legislative changes are hypothesized to have contributed to the increased prescribing of psychotropic drugs to children growing up in families in poverty: 1) changes in eligibility for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) that made it possible for poor children to qualify for additional financial assistance due to mental health conditions (1990 and 1996), and 2) changes in school accountability rules following the passage of No Child Left Behind Act (2002) that put pressure on schools in some low-income areas to qualify academically challenged students as having ADHD or other learning disabilities. The objectives of the project are: 1) to assemble a data set, using state-level data from various publicly available sources, containing information about trends in juvenile delinquency and violence, trends in psychotropic drug prescribing to children and adolescents, and various control variables associated with these two sets of trends; 2) to test the proposed hypotheses about the effect of increasing psychotropic medication prescribing to children and adolescents on juvenile delinquency and violence, using the assembled data set; and 3) to disseminate the scientific knowledge gained through this study among criminal justice researchers, psychiatric and public health scientists, as well as among a wider audience of practitioners and the general public. This collection includes one SPSS file (Dataset_NIJ_GRANT_2014-R2-CX-0003_DV-IV_3-29-17.sav; n=1,275, 113 variables) and one Word syntax file (doc36775-0001_syntax.docx).

This study was conducted to address the dropping rates in residential placements of adjudicated youth after the 1990s. Policymakers, advocates, and reseraches began to attirbute the decline to reform measures and proposed that this was the cause of the drop seen in historic national crime. In response, researchers set out to use state-level data on economic factors, crime rates, political ideology scores, and youth justice policies and practices to test the association between the youth justice policy environment and recent reductions in out-of-home placements for adjudicated youth. This data collection contains two files, a multivariate and bivariate analyses. In the multivariate file the aim was to assess the impact of the progressive policy characteristics on the dependent variable which is known as youth confinement. In the bivariate analyses file Wave 1-Wave 10 the aim was to assess the states as they are divided into 2 groups across all 16 dichotomized variables that comprised the progressive policy scale: those with more progressive youth justice environments and those with less progressive or punitive environments. Some examples of these dichotomized variables include purpose clause, courtroom shackling, and competency standard.

This dataset was compiled by the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA) at the request of the Governor’s Children’s Cabinet. This data contains the population of youth ages 13-26 in each county, the total population of each county, and the number and rate of index crimes reported, with domestic violence offenses and rates reported separately for every year between 2006 and 2015.

For the purpose of this analysis the crime data was gathered from the Illinois State Police Annual report Crime in Illinois. This publication is produced by the Illinois State Police every year using the UCR data that is submitted to them by individual jurisdictions throughout the state. The accuracy of this data presented is dependent on the local jurisdictions reporting their index crime and domestic violence offenses to ISP, so it can be included in the annual report.

Therefore, if there is large decrease in number of index crimes reported in the dataset it is likely that one or more jurisdictions did not report data for that year to ISP. If there is a large increase from year to year within a county it is likely that a jurisdiction within the county, who previously had not reported crime data, did report crime data for that year. If there is no reported crime in a certain year that means no jurisdictions, or a small jurisdiction with no crime from that county reported data to the Illinois State Police. The annual Crime in Illinois reports can be found on the ISP website www.isp.state.il.us.

A direct link to that annual reports is: http://www.isp.state.il.us/crime/ucrhome.cfm#anlrpts.

The Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority did not record the data that is expressed in the dataset. ICJIA simply used the ISP reports to compile that yearly crime data into one chart that could be provided to the Illinois Governor’s Children’s Cabinet. This data set has be critically examined to be accurate according to the annual Crime in Illinois Reports. If there are issues with the data set provided please contact the Illinois State Police or the individual jurisdictions within a specific county.

**Index offenses do not include every crime event that occurs. Prior to 2014 there were 8 index crimes reported by the Illinois State Police in their annual reports, Criminal Homicide, Rape, Robbery, Aggravated Battery/Aggravated Assault, Burglary, Theft, Motor Vehicle Theft, and Arson. In 2014 there were two new offenses added to the list of index crimes these were Human Trafficking – Commercial Sex Acts and Human Trafficking – Involuntary Servitude. These are the index crimes that are recorded in the chart provided.

**“Domestic offenses are defined as offenses committed between family or household members. Family or household members include spouses; former spouses; parents; children; foster parents; foster children; legal guardians and their wards; stepchildren; other persons related by blood (aunt, uncle, cousin) or by present or previous marriage (in-laws); persons who share, or formerly shared, a common dwelling; persons who have, or allegedly have, a child in common; persons who share, or allegedly share, a blood relationship through a child; persons who have, or have had, a dating or engagement relationship; and persons with disabilities, their personal care assistants, or care givers outside the context of an employee of a public or private care facility. Every offense that occurs, when a domestic relationship exists between the victim and offender, must be reported (Illinois State Police).”

**“Offenses reported are not limited to domestic battery and violations of orders of protection; offenses most commonly associated with domestic violence (Illinois State Police).”

The crime rate was compiled using the total population, and the index crime. The Index crime whether all crime or Domestic Violence crime was divided by the total population then multiplied by 10,000, hence crime rate per 10,000.

The sources of data are the Illinois Uniform Crime Reporting Program and the U.S. Census Bureau.

The source of the description is the Illinois State Police and their Reporting guidelines and forms.

In 2019, the robbery arrest rate for persons under age ** in Illinois stood at ***. Arrest rate is defined as the number of arrests of persons under age ** for every 100,000 persons aged 10 - 17 years old.

The NLSY97 standalone data files are intended to be used by crime researchers for analyses without requiring supplementation from the main NLSY97 data set. The data contain age-based calendar year variables on arrests and incarcerations, self-reported criminal activity, substance use, demographic variables and relevant variables from other domains which are created using the NLSY97 data. The main NLSY97 data are available for public use and can be accessed online at the NLS Investigator Web site and at the NACJD Web site (as ICPSR 3959). Questionnaires, user guides and other documentation are available at the same links. The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) was designed by the United States Department of Labor, comprising the National Longitudinal Survey (NLS) Series. Created to be representative of United States residents in 1997 who were born between the years of 1980 and 1984, the NLSY97 documents the transition from school to work experienced by today's youths through data collection from 1997. The majority of the oldest cohort members (age 16 as of December 31, 1996) were still in school during the first survey round and the youngest respondents (age 12) had not yet entered the labor market.

The number of homicides of youth ages 5 to18 years old at school in the United States has fluctuated since 1992. During the school year 2019-20, 11 youths aged between five and 18 years old were the victims of a homicide, in which the fatal injury occurred on the campus of a elementary, middle, or high school.

Selection of time series of different scientific publications and of publication of the official statistics:

EUROSTAT, European Statistical Office OECD: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development; ONS: Office for National Statistics, England; SCB: Statistiska Centralbyran, Sweden; Federal Statistical Office, Wiesbaden. Deutschland; WHO: World Health Organization.

This study combines elements of community policing and problem-oriented policing (POP) to examine the effect of a place-based policing strategy that emphasizes POP and patrol officer training in law enforcement officers (LEO)-youth interactions and youth crime prevention (POP for Youth[YPOP]) on crime outcomes and related community outcomes in 128 crime hotspots across three mid-Atlantic sites within the same county. Between July 2021 and November 2022, one third of the hotspots received traditional POP services, one third received POP for Youth treatment (POP with an emphasis on positive youth interactions), and the remaining third received regular patrol services for an intervention period of 13-16 months. The YPOP intervention was evaluated using multiple data sources, including reported intervention activities, official police data, and community surveys. The main objectives of this YPOP initiative were to: (1) Examine the impact of YPOP on crime; and (2) explore the impact of YPOP on young community member's perception of safety (victimization and fear of crime), perceptions of police and relations with the community, police legitimacy, and community collective efficacy in targeted areas.

In 2023, *** juveniles fell victim to anti-Black or African American hate crimes in the United States. A further *** juveniles were the victims of anti-Hispanic or Latino hate crimes, and another ** juveniles were victimized by anti-White hate crimes in that same year.

The 3rd National Online Victimization Study (NJOV-3) is the third wave of a longitudinal study. Wave 1 (NJOV-1) pertained to arrests for technology-facilitated crimes (e.g., sex offenders using the Internet to meet minors, solicitations to undercover investigators posing online as minors, downloading of child pornography) that occurred between July 1, 2000 and June 30, 2001; Wave 2 (NJOV-2) pertained to arrests during 2006. NJOV-3 collected data about technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation crimes ending in arrest in 2009 . For each wave of the NJOV Arrest Study, data was collected in two phases. Phase 1 was mail survey of a national sample of law enforcement agencies that asked if agencies had made arrests for technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation crimes during a specific time frame. Phase 2 was telephone interviews with investigators to collect details about individual cases reported in the mail surveys. The goal of this methodology was to 1) utilize a representative national sample of law enforcement agencies that would give us an overall picture of these crimes in the United States, 2) understand how these cases emerged and were handled in a diverse group of agencies, 3) get detailed data about the characteristics of these crimes from well-informed, reliable sources, and 4) see how the prevalence and characteristics of such crimes may have changed over time. Investigators: Wolak, J., Finkelhor, D, & Mitchell, K. J.

NCRB functions as the repository of information on crime and criminals so as to assist the investigators in linking crime to the perpetrators. Subsequently, NCRB was entrusted with the responsibility for monitoring, coordinating and implementing the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS). NCRB also compiles and publishes National Crime Statistics i.e. Crime in India, Accidental Deaths & Suicides and also Prison Statistics. These publications serve as principal reference point by policy makers, police, criminologists, researchers and media, both in India and abroad. NCRB has been conferred with Silver award during Digital India Awards 2016 under Open Data Championship category from the Government of India for uploading Crime Statistics since 1953 on Govt. Portal.This layer contains information on state/ UT wise Crime Committed by Juveniles either under India Penal Codes or Special and Local Laws (IPC+SLL) from 2018 to 2022, which was published by the Bureau on their website. Along with total juvenile crimes from 2018 to 2022, following related information are also available in the attribute table:Actual Population of children (in Lakh)Rate of Crime by JuvenilesSource: https://www.ncrb.gov.in/uploads/nationalcrimerecordsbureau/custom/psiyearwise2022/1701613297PSI2022ason01122023.pdf TABLE 5A.2 / 428-436This map layer is offered by Esri India, for ArcGIS Online subscribers. If you have any question or comments, please let us know via content@esri.in.

These data examine the relationships between childhood abuse and/or neglect and later criminal and violent criminal behavior. In particular, the data focus on whether being a victim of violence and/or neglect in early childhood leads to being a criminal offender in adolescence or early adulthood and whether a relationship exists between childhood abuse or neglect and arrests as a juvenile, arrests as an adult, and arrests for violent offenses. For this data collection, adult and juvenile criminal histories of sampled cases with backgrounds of abuse or neglect were compared to those of a matched control group with no official record of abuse or neglect. Variables contained in Part 1 include demographic information (age, race, sex, and date of birth). In Part 2, information is presented on the abuse/neglect incident (type of abuse or neglect, duration of the incident, whether the child was removed from the home and, if so, for how long, results of the placement, and whether the individual was still alive). Part 3 contains family information (with whom the child was living at the time of the incident, family disruptions, and who reported the abuse or neglect) and data on the perpetrator of the incident (relation to the victim, age, race, sex, and whether living in the home of the victim). Part 4 contains information on the charges filed within adult arrest incidents (occasion for arrest, multiple counts of the same type of charge, year and location of arrest, and type of offense or charge), and Part 5 includes information on the charges filed within juvenile arrest incidents (year of juvenile charge, number of arrests, and type of offense or charge). The unit of analysis for Parts 1 through 3 is the individual at age 11 or younger, for Part 4 the charge within the adult arrest incident, and for Part 5 the charge within the juvenile arrest incident.