This chapter discusses the sources of data available for studying delinquency as well as the weaknesses of those data sources, summarizes what is known aboutĪ common way of measuring crime is to use the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), which are compiled from data on crimes known to the police and on arrests that are reported annually to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) by police agencies around the country. Data about juvenile crime, in particular violent crime, and statistics about the size and characteristics of the juvenile population have played an important part in the policy debates (Zimring, 1998).Īre young people today actually committing more crimes than they did two decades ago? Are those crimes more violent? Are the trends the same or different for various offenses? Do those trends differ from trends in adult crime rates? How much of juvenile crime is concentrated in the nation's inner cities and among disadvantaged minorities? Because this type of information influences attitudes and government policy, it is important to have accurate answers to these questions.

Reacting to evidence of increases in juvenile violence, state and federal legislators have proposed, and most states have passed, laws that make the juvenile system more punitive and that allow younger children and adolescents to be transferred to the adult system for a greater variety of offenses and in a greater variety of ways (discussed in Chapter 5). News accounts of serious crimes committed by children and adolescents and criminologists' warnings of a coming tide of vicious juveniles-sometimes referred to as superpredators (see, e.g., Bennett et al., 1996)-have encouraged a general belief that young people are increasingly violent and uncontrollable and that the response of the juvenile justice system has been inadequate.

Since the late 1980s, there has been growing concern about crimes committed by young people. 2 Patterns and Trends in Juvenile Crime and Juvenile Justice

Nyc crime rates chart