Zimring, Franklin E.

English

Valparaiso University

Valparaiso University Law Review Volume 31 Number 2 Symposium on Juvenile Crime: Policy Proposals on Guns & Violence, Gangs, & Drugs pp.419-426 Symposium on Juvenile Crime: Policy Proposals on Guns & Violence, Gangs, & Drugs Juvenile Violence in Policy Context Franklin E. Zimring Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr  Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Franklin E. Zimring, Juvenile Violence in Policy Context, 31 Val. U. L. Rev. 419 (1997). Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol31/iss2/6 This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by the Valparaiso University Law School at ValpoScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Valparaiso University Law Review by an authorized administrator of ValpoScholar. For more information, please contact a ValpoScholar staff member at scholar@valpo.edu. JUVENILE VIOLENCE IN POLICY CONTEXTFRANKLIN E. ZIMRINGI. INTRODUCTIONThere is a concern about rates of juvenile violence in the United States ofthe mid-1990s that much resembles what sociologists call a moral panic.' Arecent study sponsored by the federal government reported that during the period1992-1995, no fewer than forty-seven of the fifty American states passedlegislation designed to change juvenile or criminal court procedures addressingviolent juvenile offenders.'Historical perspective is one of the first victims of an emergency, and thealarm expressed about serious juvenile violence these days is no exception to thispattern. This Article will provide some basic data on patterns of juvenileviolence in the United States since the mid-1970s. It will then address theimplications of the known facts about current serious violence by juveniles forappropriate policies toward youth violence in both juvenile and criminal courts.The data suggest that violence during adolescence is both quite different fromviolence among older age groups and stable over time except for a small numberof gun assaults. The implications of these patterns for policy are pretty clear.There is no change in the character of youth violence that would justifywholesale changes in legal policy. A small proportion of gun cases deservespecial attention from police, prosecutors, and judges.II. CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUTH VIOLENCETwo of the elements that distinguish violence during adolescence from thepatterns of violence found in older population groups are high volume and lowlethality. For most males, the adolescent years are peak periods for reportedepisodes of serious fighting. This phenomenon is seen more clearly in victimsurveys about injury and assaults where high rates of self-reported assaultWilliam G. Simon Professor of Law and Director, Earl Warren Legal Institute, University ofCalifornia at Berkeley. The research reported in this article is supported by a grant from the JohnD. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to the Earl Warren Legal Institute. Brooke Bedrick,a graduate student in Jurisprudence and Social Policy, provided valuable research help on the paper.1. THE BLACKWELL DICTIONARY OF SOCIOLOGY defines moral panic as "an extreme socialresponse to the perception that the moral condition of society is deteriorating at a calamitous pace.Most often such panics are promoted by mass media reports reinforced by officials in variousinstitutions...." A.G. JOHNSON, THE BLACKWELL DICTIONARY OF SOCIOLOGY 184 (1995).2. OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS, U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, STATE RESPONSES TO SERIOUS ANDVIOLENT JUVENILE CRIME, at xv fig.2 (1996).419Zimring: Juvenile Violence in Policy ContextProduced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1997420 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 31victimization are reported as early as age twelve.3 The years of adolescenttransition produce rates of fighting, particularly in peer group settings, that aremuch higher than rates for normal adults in most groups in almost all culturalsettings. 4 Yet very high rates of youth assault are traditionally associated withvery low rates of lethal violence. Early adolescence particularly is a period ofhigh rates for assault and very low rates of death.Figure 1 compares self-reported victimization rates for assault in thenational crime survey with homicide rates reported by the Vital Statistics of theUnited States for 1991. The age groups reported do not match completely, butthe categories are close enough to make a clear pattern.Figure 1. Male Homicide and Assault Victimization, by Age, 199112010810080 75 7560-4140-332 2.90 ;-----10to14 15to 19 20 to24 12to 15 16to 19 20to 24] Homicide rate per 100,000 populationAssault rate per 1.000 populationSources: 11A NAT'L CENTER FOR HEALTH STATISTICS, VITAL STATISTICS OF THE UNITED STATES36 (1991); BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION INTHE UNITED STATES 24 tbl.5 (1991).3. See infra Figure 1.4. For a discussion of juveniles' propensity to commit .times in groups, see Franklin E.Zimring, Kids, Groups, and Crime: Some Implications of a Well-Known Secret, 72 J. CRIM. L. &CRIMINOLOGY 867, 880 (1981).Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 [1997], Art. 6https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol31/iss2/6JUVENILE VIOLENCE IN POLICY CONTEXT 421Rates of assault are reported per 1000 males in each age group in thenational crime survey, so that the assault rate reported by twelve to fifteen-year-old boys is 7.5 % or 75 per 1000 males. This assault rate is equal to that oftwenty to twenty-four-year-old males and about one-third lower than the peakrate experienced in the next oldest age group, sixteen to nineteen-year-old males.Despite this high volume, the homicide victimization for younger adolescents ismuch lower than for adults. The homicide rate in ages twenty to twenty-four isfourteen times that of ages ten through fourteen despite the fact that ages twelve,thirteen, and fourteen report a rate of assault victimization equal to the oldergroups. Even during 1991 near the peak of the increase in juvenile homicide,the fifteen to nineteen-year-olds have a significantly lower homicide rate than thenext oldest male age group in spite of a significantly higher assault rate.Figure 2. Homicide Arrests per 100 Homicide and Assault Arrests by Age ofOffender, 19921 . 7.6S 7.27- 6.6 6.76-5.65-43.832 - 1.90.6011to 12 13to 14 15 16 17 18 19 20Source: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, CRIME IN THE UNITEDSTATES (1992).One way to measure the relative concentration of life-threatening violencein the different age groups is to express the ratio of assault to homicidevictimizations. For the youngest group, there are more than 2500 reportedassaults for each reported homicide. For the middle and older adolescents, the1997]Zimring: Juvenile Violence in Policy ContextProduced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1997422 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 31ratio is about 327 to 1. For young men, it is 183 to 1. These are aggregatetotals, but they show clearly that youth violence is distinctly different from adultviolence in aggregate lethality.The data from Figure 1 involve the broadest possible measure of youthviolence: victim survey reports. We might expect that statistical comparisonsof only those events that lead to serious arrests by the police would reveal morecontinuity between violence reported for the different age groups. Figure 2shows, however, that even police reported aggravated assaults are much lessdangerous in younger age groups. Figure 2 shows the number of homicidearrests for every 100 homicide and aggravated assault arrests for age groupsfrom eleven to twenty. The higher the number, the larger the number offatalities each 100 aggravated assaults produce.Every 100 aggravated assault and homicide arrests for ages eleven to twelvecontains less than one homicide arrest, a rate less than one-tenth of that foundafter age seventeen. The apparent death rate among thirteen and fourteen-year-olds is less than one-third as great as for seventeen and eighteen-year-olds.There are two important lessons about youth violence to be learned fromFigure 2. First, police categories like aggravated assault are extremelyheterogeneous in that they include a large variety of different types of attacks.All-but-fatal shootings and stabbings are mixed together with much lessthreatening attacks into a single broad category. It is prudent to suppose that theindex crime of robbery is also a heterogeneous mix of very different types ofviolent offenses.5The second important point is that younger offenders tend to commit theless threatening forms of these crime categories more often than older offenders.The large difference in homicides per 100 assaults shows that youngeradolescents arrested even for the highest grade assault in the Uniform CrimeReports are concentrated at the very bottom of the seriousness scale foraggravated assaults. Any policy that assumes that adolescent violence is similarto adult violence, even within the aggravated assault category, is demonstrablywrong.The high volume/low death rate profile remains true in the 1990s as it wasin earlier periods. But between 1985 and 1992, gun homicides increaseddramatically among fourteen to seventeen-year-olds and this gun homicide5. See Franklin E. Zimring, Youth Homicide in New York, 13 J. LEGAL STUD. 81, 94-95(1984).Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 [1997], Art. 6https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol31/iss2/6JUVENILE VIOLENCE IN POLICY CONTEXT 423expansion produced a near tripling of the total deaths attributable to offendersunder age eighteen, as shown in Figure 3.Figure 3. Number of Gun, Nongun, and Total Homicides by Juvenile Offenders(10-17), 1976-1992.2000 -150010E ........................1000 -.0Ez~l500.......................................---0o 1' _ I I _11 ' _'1977 1979 1 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 19911976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992Gun homicides-----------Nongun homicides................... Total homicidesSource: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS:SUPPLEMENTARY HOMICIDE REPORTS, 1st ICPSR version (1976-1992).Two characteristics of Figure 3 deserve special emphasis. First, only gunkillings expanded during the post-1984 homicide boom. Non-gun homicide isessentially flat (and quite low) throughout the period from 1976 to 1992. Theextreme contrast between gun and non-gun homicide trends suggests that thereis more change in weapons at work since 1985 than any essential change in thecharacter of the population. If there were a large group of "new, more violentjuvenile offenders" that was the proximate cause of explosive increases inhomicide, one would expect the increase in killing to be spread broadly acrossdifferent weapon categories. Figure 3 tells us that a change in hardware ratherthan a .change in software was the principal cause of higher youth homicide.1997]Zimring: Juvenile Violence in Policy ContextProduced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1997424 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 31Obviously, one conclusion is that policies to minimize youth gun use shouldreceive priority attention in responding to youth violence.The second aspect of Figure 3 worth preliminary attention is that thenumber of homicides is not large in comparison to the high rates of youthassault we observe for a teenage population. This generalization is both true andmisleading. Pushing all fatal and nonfatal assaults into a single fraction isprobably bad criminology. Two quite different patterns are mixed into theaggregate data. Millions of fights and assaults with personal force or assortedweapons generate very few deaths and are stable over time. A relatively smallnumber of gunshot woundings (20,000 to 50,000 per year)6 were growingrapidly and expanding the overall death risk from youth assault in the late 1980sand early 1990s.III. POLICY IMPLICATIONSFollowing are three policy-relevant conclusions supported by a closereading of this data. First, the increase in lethal violence among fourteen toseventeen-year-old offenders is wholly attributed to increases in gun use.Second, the relatively thin layer of gun assault should be clearly distinguishedfrom most juvenile crime, indeed from most juvenile violence, which has notchanged significantly over the last decade. And third, to reframe the ageboundaries, punishment powers, or rationale of juvenile justice because of20,000 to 50,000 shootings per year is letting a very small tail wag a very largedog. Each of these conclusions deserves further discussion.A. The Increase in Lethal Violence Among Fourteen to Seventeen-Year-OldOffenders Is Wholly Attributable to Increases in Gun Use.Obviously, shooting and risk-generating behavior with handguns shouldtherefore be a priority focus in prevention, policing, and justice systemresponse. Does this mean that juveniles who are apprehended shooting orpossessing handguns should be subjected to adult penalties? I have arguedelsewhere that this would be inconsistent with the view of adolescents that ledus to prohibit them from purchasing and possessing guns.7  The veryimmaturity that makes possession of handguns worrisome even where adultpossession is approved qualifies the culpability of those young persons whomisuse guns. So equal punishment is inconsistent with the schemes of agegrading that lead us to define firearms possession by minors as a specialproblem.6. See infra section III.C.7. Franklin E. Zimring, Kids, Guns, and Homicide: Policy Notes on an Age-Specific Epidemic,59 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 25 (1995).Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 [1997], Art. 6https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol31/iss2/61997] JUVENILE VIOLENCE IN POLICY CONTEXT 425But the juvenile offender who shoots intentionally should be defined as themost serious problem in the wide range of behaviors that constitute Americanyouth violence in the 1990s. Within the special framework of juvenile justice,firearms injury is the highest penal priority. But only in those cases wheredeath results will it be likely that the minimum sanction necessary to justice ina particular case exceeds the level of punishment that a juvenile court can orshould be in power to impose.' In most juvenile shooting cases, the best placefor adjudication would be in the juvenile court, but the penal stakes of suchcases will be close to that court's maximum.B. The Relatively Thin Layer of Gun Assault Should Be Clearly Distinguishedfrom Most Juvenile Crime, Indeed from Most Juvenile Violence, Which HasNot Changed Significantly over the Last DecadeAny change in treatment that covers juvenile aggravated assault and armedrobbery will include many more cases of low-lethality forms of youth violencethan of acts highly dangerous to life. Any law that reclassifies entire categoriesof violent crime other than homicide will be grossly overbroad because of thegreat range of seriousness in the aggravated assault and robbery crime categoriesand the tendency for the large majority of youth violence acts to be clusterednear the low end of the seriousness scale.C. To Reframe the Age Boundaries, Punishment Powers, or Rationale ofJuvenile Justice Because of 20, 000 to 50, 000 Shootings Per Year IsLetting a Very Small Tail Wag a Very Big DogTwo thousand killings per year would suggest a volume of highly dangerousattacks in a range from 20,000 to 50,000 per year nationwide, most of theseshootings. There is, of course, a wide margin of error associated with such anestimate. Using a ratio of nonfatal to fatal shootings of one to seven, one couldgenerate a high-lethality attack estimate well under 20,000 per year. Addinglarge numbers of marginal cases could push the number over 50,000.If 20,000 to 50,000 highly dangerous behaviors were the proximate causeof recent increases in youth homicide, this figure constitutes a small fraction ofyouth crime and youth violence. The annual volume of delinquency cases inUnited States juvenile courts is about 1.5 million. The total volume of highlethality assaults would be between 1.4 % and 3.5 % of formal delinquency cases.The great majority of juvenile assault and robbery cases are not different in the1990s from previous decades.8. Franklin E. Zimring, The Treatment of Hard Cases in American Juvenile Justice: In Defenseof Discretionary Waiver, 5 NOTRE DAME J.L. ETHICs & PUB. POL'Y 267 (1991).Zimring: Juvenile Violence in Policy ContextProduced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1997426 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 31Yet the high-lethality cases have come to symbolize the current profile ofdelinquency for many who wish to gang up on the juvenile court as a legalprocess for responding to youth crime. The juvenile court is an institutiondesigned to balance the immaturity and special needs of kids against the need tocondemn and control the criminal harms caused by their actions. It seems thebest institution available to confront the thin layer of high lethality violence inall but the most serious cases. And the vast bulk of its work concerns far lessserious community threats.Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 [1997], Art. 6https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol31/iss2/6

Juvenile Violence in Policy Context

ValpoScholar

Valparaiso University Law Review 
Volume 31 
Number 2 Symposium on Juvenile Crime: Policy 
Proposals on Guns & Violence, Gangs, & Drugs 
pp.419-426 
Symposium on Juvenile Crime: Policy Proposals on Guns & Violence, 
Gangs, & Drugs 
Juvenile Violence in Policy Context 
Franklin E. Zimring 
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr 
 Part of the Law Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Franklin E. Zimring, Juvenile Violence in Policy Context, 31 Val. U. L. Rev. 419 (1997). 
Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol31/iss2/6 
This Symposium is brought to you for free and open 
access by the Valparaiso University Law School at 
ValpoScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in 
Valparaiso University Law Review by an authorized 
administrator of ValpoScholar. For more information, 
please contact a ValpoScholar staff member at 
scholar@valpo.edu. 
JUVENILE VIOLENCE IN POLICY CONTEXT
FRANKLIN E. ZIMRING
I. INTRODUCTION
There is a concern about rates of juvenile violence in the United States of
the mid-1990s that much resembles what sociologists call a moral panic.' A
recent study sponsored by the federal government reported that during the period
1992-1995, no fewer than forty-seven of the fifty American states passed
legislation designed to change juvenile or criminal court procedures addressing
violent juvenile offenders.'
Historical perspective is one of the first victims of an emergency, and the
alarm expressed about serious juvenile violence these days is no exception to this
pattern. This Article will provide some basic data on patterns of juvenile
violence in the United States since the mid-1970s. It will then address the
implications of the known facts about current serious violence by juveniles for
appropriate policies toward youth violence in both juvenile and criminal courts.
The data suggest that violence during adolescence is both quite different from
violence among older age groups and stable over time except for a small number
of gun assaults. The implications of these patterns for policy are pretty clear.
There is no change in the character of youth violence that would justify
wholesale changes in legal policy. A small proportion of gun cases deserve
special attention from police, prosecutors, and judges.
II. CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUTH VIOLENCE
Two of the elements that distinguish violence during adolescence from the
patterns of violence found in older population groups are high volume and low
lethality. For most males, the adolescent years are peak periods for reported
episodes of serious fighting. This phenomenon is seen more clearly in victim
surveys about injury and assaults where high rates of self-reported assault
William G. Simon Professor of Law and Director, Earl Warren Legal Institute, University of
California at Berkeley. The research reported in this article is supported by a grant from the John
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to the Earl Warren Legal Institute. Brooke Bedrick,
a graduate student in Jurisprudence and Social Policy, provided valuable research help on the paper.
1. THE BLACKWELL DICTIONARY OF SOCIOLOGY defines moral panic as "an extreme social
response to the perception that the moral condition of society is deteriorating at a calamitous pace.
Most often such panics are promoted by mass media reports reinforced by officials in various
institutions...." A.G. JOHNSON, THE BLACKWELL DICTIONARY OF SOCIOLOGY 184 (1995).
2. OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS, U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, STATE RESPONSES TO SERIOUS AND
VIOLENT JUVENILE CRIME, at xv fig.2 (1996).
419
Zimring: Juvenile Violence in Policy Context
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1997
420 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 31
victimization are reported as early as age twelve.3 The years of adolescent
transition produce rates of fighting, particularly in peer group settings, that are
much higher than rates for normal adults in most groups in almost all cultural
settings. 4 Yet very high rates of youth assault are traditionally associated with
very low rates of lethal violence. Early adolescence particularly is a period of
high rates for assault and very low rates of death.
Figure 1 compares self-reported victimization rates for assault in the
national crime survey with homicide rates reported by the Vital Statistics of the
United States for 1991. The age groups reported do not match completely, but
the categories are close enough to make a clear pattern.
Figure 1. Male Homicide and Assault Victimization, by Age, 1991
120
108
100
80 75 75
60-
41
40-
33
2 2.9
0 ;-----
10to14 15to 19 20 to24 12to 15 16to 19 20to 24
] Homicide rate per 100,000 population
Assault rate per 1.000 population
Sources: 11A NAT'L CENTER FOR HEALTH STATISTICS, VITAL STATISTICS OF THE UNITED STATES
36 (1991); BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS, U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION IN
THE UNITED STATES 24 tbl.5 (1991).
3. See infra Figure 1.
4. For a discussion of juveniles' propensity to commit .times in groups, see Franklin E.
Zimring, Kids, Groups, and Crime: Some Implications of a Well-Known Secret, 72 J. CRIM. L. &
CRIMINOLOGY 867, 880 (1981).
Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 [1997], Art. 6
https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol31/iss2/6
JUVENILE VIOLENCE IN POLICY CONTEXT 421
Rates of assault are reported per 1000 males in each age group in the
national crime survey, so that the assault rate reported by twelve to fifteen-year-
old boys is 7.5 % or 75 per 1000 males. This assault rate is equal to that of
twenty to twenty-four-year-old males and about one-third lower than the peak
rate experienced in the next oldest age group, sixteen to nineteen-year-old males.
Despite this high volume, the homicide victimization for younger adolescents is
much lower than for adults. The homicide rate in ages twenty to twenty-four is
fourteen times that of ages ten through fourteen despite the fact that ages twelve,
thirteen, and fourteen report a rate of assault victimization equal to the older
groups. Even during 1991 near the peak of the increase in juvenile homicide,
the fifteen to nineteen-year-olds have a significantly lower homicide rate than the
next oldest male age group in spite of a significantly higher assault rate.
Figure 2. Homicide Arrests per 100 Homicide and Assault Arrests by Age of
Offender, 1992
1 . 7.6
S 7.2
7- 6.6 6.7
6-
5.6
5-
43.8
3
2 - 1.9
0.6
0
11to 12 13to 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Source: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, CRIME IN THE UNITED
STATES (1992).
One way to measure the relative concentration of life-threatening violence
in the different age groups is to express the ratio of assault to homicide
victimizations. For the youngest group, there are more than 2500 reported
assaults for each reported homicide. For the middle and older adolescents, the
1997]
Zimring: Juvenile Violence in Policy Context
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1997
422 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 31
ratio is about 327 to 1. For young men, it is 183 to 1. These are aggregate
totals, but they show clearly that youth violence is distinctly different from adult
violence in aggregate lethality.
The data from Figure 1 involve the broadest possible measure of youth
violence: victim survey reports. We might expect that statistical comparisons
of only those events that lead to serious arrests by the police would reveal more
continuity between violence reported for the different age groups. Figure 2
shows, however, that even police reported aggravated assaults are much less
dangerous in younger age groups. Figure 2 shows the number of homicide
arrests for every 100 homicide and aggravated assault arrests for age groups
from eleven to twenty. The higher the number, the larger the number of
fatalities each 100 aggravated assaults produce.
Every 100 aggravated assault and homicide arrests for ages eleven to twelve
contains less than one homicide arrest, a rate less than one-tenth of that found
after age seventeen. The apparent death rate among thirteen and fourteen-year-
olds is less than one-third as great as for seventeen and eighteen-year-olds.
There are two important lessons about youth violence to be learned from
Figure 2. First, police categories like aggravated assault are extremely
heterogeneous in that they include a large variety of different types of attacks.
All-but-fatal shootings and stabbings are mixed together with much less
threatening attacks into a single broad category. It is prudent to suppose that the
index crime of robbery is also a heterogeneous mix of very different types of
violent offenses.5
The second important point is that younger offenders tend to commit the
less threatening forms of these crime categories more often than older offenders.
The large difference in homicides per 100 assaults shows that younger
adolescents arrested even for the highest grade assault in the Uniform Crime
Reports are concentrated at the very bottom of the seriousness scale for
aggravated assaults. Any policy that assumes that adolescent violence is similar
to adult violence, even within the aggravated assault category, is demonstrably
wrong.
The high volume/low death rate profile remains true in the 1990s as it was
in earlier periods. But between 1985 and 1992, gun homicides increased
dramatically among fourteen to seventeen-year-olds and this gun homicide
5. See Franklin E. Zimring, Youth Homicide in New York, 13 J. LEGAL STUD. 81, 94-95
(1984).
Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 [1997], Art. 6
https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol31/iss2/6
JUVENILE VIOLENCE IN POLICY CONTEXT 423
expansion produced a near tripling of the total deaths attributable to offenders
under age eighteen, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Number of Gun, Nongun, and Total Homicides by Juvenile Offenders
(10-17), 1976-1992.
2000 -
1500
10E ........................
1000 -
.0
E
z~l
500
.......................................---
0o 1' 
_ 
I I 
_11 ' _'1977 1979 1 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991
1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992
Gun homicides
-----------Nongun homicides
................... Total homicides
Source: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION, U.S. DEP'T OF JUSTICE, UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS:
SUPPLEMENTARY HOMICIDE REPORTS, 1st ICPSR version (1976-1992).
Two characteristics of Figure 3 deserve special emphasis. First, only gun
killings expanded during the post-1984 homicide boom. Non-gun homicide is
essentially flat (and quite low) throughout the period from 1976 to 1992. The
extreme contrast between gun and non-gun homicide trends suggests that there
is more change in weapons at work since 1985 than any essential change in the
character of the population. If there were a large group of "new, more violent
juvenile offenders" that was the proximate cause of explosive increases in
homicide, one would expect the increase in killing to be spread broadly across
different weapon categories. Figure 3 tells us that a change in hardware rather
than a .change in software was the principal cause of higher youth homicide.
1997]
Zimring: Juvenile Violence in Policy Context
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1997
424 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 31
Obviously, one conclusion is that policies to minimize youth gun use should
receive priority attention in responding to youth violence.
The second aspect of Figure 3 worth preliminary attention is that the
number of homicides is not large in comparison to the high rates of youth
assault we observe for a teenage population. This generalization is both true and
misleading. Pushing all fatal and nonfatal assaults into a single fraction is
probably bad criminology. Two quite different patterns are mixed into the
aggregate data. Millions of fights and assaults with personal force or assorted
weapons generate very few deaths and are stable over time. A relatively small
number of gunshot woundings (20,000 to 50,000 per year)6 were growing
rapidly and expanding the overall death risk from youth assault in the late 1980s
and early 1990s.
III. POLICY IMPLICATIONS
Following are three policy-relevant conclusions supported by a close
reading of this data. First, the increase in lethal violence among fourteen to
seventeen-year-old offenders is wholly attributed to increases in gun use.
Second, the relatively thin layer of gun assault should be clearly distinguished
from most juvenile crime, indeed from most juvenile violence, which has not
changed significantly over the last decade. And third, to reframe the age
boundaries, punishment powers, or rationale of juvenile justice because of
20,000 to 50,000 shootings per year is letting a very small tail wag a very large
dog. Each of these conclusions deserves further discussion.
A. The Increase in Lethal Violence Among Fourteen to Seventeen-Year-Old
Offenders Is Wholly Attributable to Increases in Gun Use.
Obviously, shooting and risk-generating behavior with handguns should
therefore be a priority focus in prevention, policing, and justice system
response. Does this mean that juveniles who are apprehended shooting or
possessing handguns should be subjected to adult penalties? I have argued
elsewhere that this would be inconsistent with the view of adolescents that led
us to prohibit them from purchasing and possessing guns.7  The very
immaturity that makes possession of handguns worrisome even where adult
possession is approved qualifies the culpability of those young persons who
misuse guns. So equal punishment is inconsistent with the schemes of age
grading that lead us to define firearms possession by minors as a special
problem.
6. See infra section III.C.
7. Franklin E. Zimring, Kids, Guns, and Homicide: Policy Notes on an Age-Specific Epidemic,
59 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 25 (1995).
Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 [1997], Art. 6
https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol31/iss2/6
1997] JUVENILE VIOLENCE IN POLICY CONTEXT 425
But the juvenile offender who shoots intentionally should be defined as the
most serious problem in the wide range of behaviors that constitute American
youth violence in the 1990s. Within the special framework of juvenile justice,
firearms injury is the highest penal priority. But only in those cases where
death results will it be likely that the minimum sanction necessary to justice in
a particular case exceeds the level of punishment that a juvenile court can or
should be in power to impose.' In most juvenile shooting cases, the best place
for adjudication would be in the juvenile court, but the penal stakes of such
cases will be close to that court's maximum.
B. The Relatively Thin Layer of Gun Assault Should Be Clearly Distinguished
from Most Juvenile Crime, Indeed from Most Juvenile Violence, Which Has
Not Changed Significantly over the Last Decade
Any change in treatment that covers juvenile aggravated assault and armed
robbery will include many more cases of low-lethality forms of youth violence
than of acts highly dangerous to life. Any law that reclassifies entire categories
of violent crime other than homicide will be grossly overbroad because of the
great range of seriousness in the aggravated assault and robbery crime categories
and the tendency for the large majority of youth violence acts to be clustered
near the low end of the seriousness scale.
C. To Reframe the Age Boundaries, Punishment Powers, or Rationale of
Juvenile Justice Because of 20, 000 to 50, 000 Shootings Per Year Is
Letting a Very Small Tail Wag a Very Big Dog
Two thousand killings per year would suggest a volume of highly dangerous
attacks in a range from 20,000 to 50,000 per year nationwide, most of these
shootings. There is, of course, a wide margin of error associated with such an
estimate. Using a ratio of nonfatal to fatal shootings of one to seven, one could
generate a high-lethality attack estimate well under 20,000 per year. Adding
large numbers of marginal cases could push the number over 50,000.
If 20,000 to 50,000 highly dangerous behaviors were the proximate cause
of recent increases in youth homicide, this figure constitutes a small fraction of
youth crime and youth violence. The annual volume of delinquency cases in
United States juvenile courts is about 1.5 million. The total volume of high
lethality assaults would be between 1.4 % and 3.5 % of formal delinquency cases.
The great majority of juvenile assault and robbery cases are not different in the
1990s from previous decades.
8. Franklin E. Zimring, The Treatment of Hard Cases in American Juvenile Justice: In Defense
of Discretionary Waiver, 5 NOTRE DAME J.L. ETHICs & PUB. POL'Y 267 (1991).
Zimring: Juvenile Violence in Policy Context
Produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press, 1997
426 VALPARAISO UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 31
Yet the high-lethality cases have come to symbolize the current profile of
delinquency for many who wish to gang up on the juvenile court as a legal
process for responding to youth crime. The juvenile court is an institution
designed to balance the immaturity and special needs of kids against the need to
condemn and control the criminal harms caused by their actions. It seems the
best institution available to confront the thin layer of high lethality violence in
all but the most serious cases. And the vast bulk of its work concerns far less
serious community threats.
Valparaiso University Law Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 [1997], Art. 6
https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol31/iss2/6


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