press@gunsafe.org wrote:
>
> >From the L.A. Times.
>
> Juvenile Crime Is Decreasing--
>
> It's Media Coverage That's Soaring
>
> Failure to put the real facts about kids'
> behavior into context has generated an
> unnecessary atmosphere of fear.
>
> By VINCENT SCHIRALDI
>
> Recently, as it has every fall since 1993, the Justice
> Department announced a significant 11% decline in serious
> and violent juvenile crime over the previous year--double
> the percentage of decline in adult crime. Yet how can
> juvenile crime be dropping when we seem to be watching
> young bodies being wheeled out of schools on gurneys
> nightly on the news? One explanation is because saturation
> coverage of the acts of a handful of kids is skewing our
> nation's understanding of crime by youth.
>
> This kind of coverage began in earnest two years ago, after
> two shocking killings by juveniles in the same week, one
> in New Jersey involving 15-year-old Sam Manzie, who killed
> an 11-year-old boy who was selling candy door to door, and
> the other in Pearl, Miss., involving 16-year-old Luke Woodham,
> who stabbed his mother to death, then shot two classmates
> and wounded several others.
>
> At that same time, virtually unnoticed by the press, Atty.
> Gen. Janet Reno announced juvenile crime data showing a
> significant 30% decline in juvenile homicides over the
> previous three years.
>
> The Mississippi killing was the first of a trend--not of
> increasing school shootings but of increasing media coverage
> of such shootings and other juvenile crime--that has lasted
> to the present day. According to the Berkeley Media Studies
> Group, most of the time when kids are depicted on the evening
> news, it is in connection with violence, even though less
> than one-half of 1% of juveniles were arrested for a violent
> crime last year.
>
> Indeed, this trend holds true for all crime coverage. Between
> 1992 and 1996, while the homicide rate in the United States
> dropped by 20%, coverage of homicide on the ABC, NBC and CBS
> evening news increased by 721%, according to a survey by the
> Center on Media and Public Affairs. Not surprisingly, polls
> showed six times as many people ranking crime as the No. 1
>
> problem in 1993 as did in 1992, and fear of crime has been
> at or near the top of the polls every year since.
>
> To be sure, the rates of adult and juvenile crime are higher
> now than in the 1960s, although rates for both have been
> declining since the early 1990s. Yet one-third of Americans
> believe that crimes committed by adults are on the increase
> and even more--two-thirds--believe that juvenile crime is on
> the increase. Why? Perhaps it's the connection to highly
> publicized schools crimes.
>
> Nowadays, it is impossible to talk about juvenile crime
> and not discuss school shootings. Yet school shootings are
> extremely rare and are not on the increase. In a population
> of about 50 million schoolchildren, there were about 55
> school-associated violent deaths in the 1992-93 school year
> and fewer than half that in the 1998-99 school year. By
> comparison, in 1997, 88 people were killed by lightning-
> -what might be considered the gold standard for idiosyncratic
> events. Children who are killed in the United States are
> almost never killed inside a school. Yes, 12 kids were
> killed at Columbine. But by comparison, every two days in
> the U.S., 11 children die at the hands of their parents or
> guardians.
>
> In addition, kids are not killing one another at an increasing
> rate. In fact, they rarely kill one another. Less than 3% of
> the homicides in the U.S. involve someone under 18 killing
> someone else under 18. Killings by children under 13 are at
> the second-lowest rate since that statistic began being kept
> in the mid-1960s.
>
> Failure to put juvenile crime into context has resulted in a
> public that is not just misinformed but profoundly misguided
> about how teenagers are behaving. Polls show that Americans
> believe that juveniles are responsible for 43% of homicides;
> they actually are responsible for about 9%. As stated previously,
> nearly two-thirds of Americans think juvenile crime is on the
> increase, while there has been a 58% decline in juvenile
> homicides since 1994. Although there was less than a one-in-
> a-million chance of being killed in a school last year, 71%
> of respondents to a May 1998 Wall Street Journal poll believed
> that such a killing was likely in their school. In a Washington
> Post poll released in early November, almost two-thirds of parents
> listed school violence as something "worrying them the most these
> days."
>
> Politicians are fed back these fears and misconceptions about
> juvenile crime, which they talk about and legislate about,
> closing the media-public opinion-policymaking loop.
>
> In supporting his Violent Youth Predator Act of 1996, which
> would have jailed some kids with adults upon arrest, Rep.
> Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) stated: "They're the predators out there.
> They're not children anymore. They're the most violent criminals
> on the face of the Earth." This comment was made not by a rogue
> Congress member but by the chairman of the House Judiciary
> Committee's subcommittee on crime.
>
> It is no more fair to stereotype U.S. high school students as
> Luke Woodham than it would be to taint all adults with the
> sins of Timothy McVeigh. Our kids are the ones on the other
> side of the yellow tape, weeping over the death of their
> classmates, just like the rest of us. As we set public policy,
> that is something we need to remember.
>
> - - -
>
> Vincent Schiraldi Is Director of the Washington, D.c.-based
> Justice Policy Institute
>
> >From the L.A. Times.
>
> Juvenile Crime Is Decreasing--
>
> It's Media Coverage That's Soaring
>
> Failure to put the real facts about kids'
> behavior into context has generated an
> unnecessary atmosphere of fear.
>
> By VINCENT SCHIRALDI
>
> Recently, as it has every fall since 1993, the Justice
> Department announced a significant 11% decline in serious
> and violent juvenile crime over the previous year--double
> the percentage of decline in adult crime. Yet how can
> juvenile crime be dropping when we seem to be watching
> young bodies being wheeled out of schools on gurneys
> nightly on the news? One explanation is because saturation
> coverage of the acts of a handful of kids is skewing our
> nation's understanding of crime by youth.
>
> This kind of coverage began in earnest two years ago, after
> two shocking killings by juveniles in the same week, one
> in New Jersey involving 15-year-old Sam Manzie, who killed
> an 11-year-old boy who was selling candy door to door, and
> the other in Pearl, Miss., involving 16-year-old Luke Woodham,
> who stabbed his mother to death, then shot two classmates
> and wounded several others.
>
> At that same time, virtually unnoticed by the press, Atty.
> Gen. Janet Reno announced juvenile crime data showing a
> significant 30% decline in juvenile homicides over the
> previous three years.
>
> The Mississippi killing was the first of a trend--not of
> increasing school shootings but of increasing media coverage
> of such shootings and other juvenile crime--that has lasted
> to the present day. According to the Berkeley Media Studies
> Group, most of the time when kids are depicted on the evening
> news, it is in connection with violence, even though less
> than one-half of 1% of juveniles were arrested for a violent
> crime last year.
>
> Indeed, this trend holds true for all crime coverage. Between
> 1992 and 1996, while the homicide rate in the United States
> dropped by 20%, coverage of homicide on the ABC, NBC and CBS
> evening news increased by 721%, according to a survey by the
> Center on Media and Public Affairs. Not surprisingly, polls
> showed six times as many people ranking crime as the No. 1
>
> problem in 1993 as did in 1992, and fear of crime has been
> at or near the top of the polls every year since.
>
> To be sure, the rates of adult and juvenile crime are higher
> now than in the 1960s, although rates for both have been
> declining since the early 1990s. Yet one-third of Americans
> believe that crimes committed by adults are on the increase
> and even more--two-thirds--believe that juvenile crime is on
> the increase. Why? Perhaps it's the connection to highly
> publicized schools crimes.
>
> Nowadays, it is impossible to talk about juvenile crime
> and not discuss school shootings. Yet school shootings are
> extremely rare and are not on the increase. In a population
> of about 50 million schoolchildren, there were about 55
> school-associated violent deaths in the 1992-93 school year
> and fewer than half that in the 1998-99 school year. By
> comparison, in 1997, 88 people were killed by lightning-
> -what might be considered the gold standard for idiosyncratic
> events. Children who are killed in the United States are
> almost never killed inside a school. Yes, 12 kids were
> killed at Columbine. But by comparison, every two days in
> the U.S., 11 children die at the hands of their parents or
> guardians.
>
> In addition, kids are not killing one another at an increasing
> rate. In fact, they rarely kill one another. Less than 3% of
> the homicides in the U.S. involve someone under 18 killing
> someone else under 18. Killings by children under 13 are at
> the second-lowest rate since that statistic began being kept
> in the mid-1960s.
>
> Failure to put juvenile crime into context has resulted in a
> public that is not just misinformed but profoundly misguided
> about how teenagers are behaving. Polls show that Americans
> believe that juveniles are responsible for 43% of homicides;
> they actually are responsible for about 9%. As stated previously,
> nearly two-thirds of Americans think juvenile crime is on the
> increase, while there has been a 58% decline in juvenile
> homicides since 1994. Although there was less than a one-in-
> a-million chance of being killed in a school last year, 71%
> of respondents to a May 1998 Wall Street Journal poll believed
> that such a killing was likely in their school. In a Washington
> Post poll released in early November, almost two-thirds of parents
> listed school violence as something "worrying them the most these
> days."
>
> Politicians are fed back these fears and misconceptions about
> juvenile crime, which they talk about and legislate about,
> closing the media-public opinion-policymaking loop.
>
> In supporting his Violent Youth Predator Act of 1996, which
> would have jailed some kids with adults upon arrest, Rep.
> Bill McCollum (R-Fla.) stated: "They're the predators out there.
> They're not children anymore. They're the most violent criminals
> on the face of the Earth." This comment was made not by a rogue
> Congress member but by the chairman of the House Judiciary
> Committee's subcommittee on crime.
>
> It is no more fair to stereotype U.S. high school students as
> Luke Woodham than it would be to taint all adults with the
> sins of Timothy McVeigh. Our kids are the ones on the other
> side of the yellow tape, weeping over the death of their
> classmates, just like the rest of us. As we set public policy,
> that is something we need to remember.
>
> - - -
>
> Vincent Schiraldi Is Director of the Washington, D.c.-based
> Justice Policy Institute