Startling Revelation About the Increased Violence & Crime Across the Country

Juv. Homicides Acting Alone Up 30% - Acting By Multiple Juv. Up 66% - Juv Killing Juv. Highest in 20yrs.
How Easy Access to Guns & "Raise the Age" Laws Led to Catch & Release & Recidivism

Juvenile Crime Surges, Reversing Long Decline. ‘It’s Just Kids Killing Kids.’

Violence among children has soared across the country since 2020. One consequence: a mounting toll of young victims.

Violence among children has soared across the country since 2020, a stark reversal of a decades long decline in juvenile crime.

In the U.S., homicides committed by juveniles acting alone rose 30% in 2020 from a year earlier, while those committed by multiple juveniles increased 66%, the highest it's been in more than 20 years. The number of killings committed by children under 14 was the highest in 20 years, according to the most recent federal data.

The jump comes amid an overall wave of violent crime in the first two years of the pandemic—particularly homicides and shootings—that swept through urban and rural areas alike. The rise in juvenile shootings hasn’t been limited to the biggest cities.

Police, prosecutors and community groups attribute much of the youth violence to broad disruptions that started with the pandemic and lockdowns. Schools shut down, depriving students of structure in daily life, as did services for troubled children. Increased stress compounded a swelling mental-health crisis. Social-media conflicts increasingly turned deadly.

The nationwide wave began to ebb in 2022, but in some communities, shootings involving minors have continued to surge.

With less to do, many also drifted deeper into social-media circles where guns and crime were glamorized.

Firearms were seemingly everywhere, as gun sales skyrocketed during the pandemic. Kids got them from family members, purchased them on Instagram for a few hundred dollars, or bought homemade ghost guns from other teens. One juvenile legal defense attorney blames the growing youth violence on what he described as shockingly easy access to guns. “I’ve never seen it this bad. I’ve never seen the amount of weapons that have flooded the streets of New York.”

“They think it’s cool,” said K’Mya, a team leader at the Young Chances Foundation, a community organization that seeks to prevent violence. “They want that gun to define themselves and for people to be scared of them.”

Stricter punishments

Some prosecutors and law enforcement leaders argue that the shift away from a more punitive approach for juveniles toward intervention programs and rehabilitation has gone too far and corrections are needed.

Ms. Clark, the Bronx district attorney and a Democrat, supported a 2017 New York law that ended the automatic prosecution of 16- and 17-year-olds as adults, raising the age to 18. Most states had already passed similar “Raise the Age” laws. She said under the Raise the Age law, too many juveniles arrested on gun possession charges are being released quickly because such cases are typically sent to family court—and some of those minors are going on to commit more serious crimes or are being murdered themselves. wsj.com


A look at why almost all states have “raise the age” laws
Today, there are only three states that do not have Raise the Age laws — Georgia, Wisconsin and Texas. In these states, the cut-off age remains at 16 years old. In the states that do have Raise the Age laws, the cut-off raises to 18.

As part of focusing on rehabilitation over punitive measures, many states in the country have implemented Raise the Age laws. Raise the Age laws set a higher age requirement for an individual to go through adult courts. There are some exceptions to these laws, but generally, the result is a recordable improvement for juveniles.

What are Raise the Age laws?

Raise the Age laws focus on when courts treat someone as a juvenile versus when they treat them as an adult. They, in the most literal sense, raise the age threshold for when courts can treat someone as an adult rather than a juvenile. This impacts their treatment in court and in detention facilities.

There are exceptions to Raise the Age laws. These are called juvenile waiver offenses. This means that a juvenile will still be tried as an adult regardless of their age and will go to an adult correctional facility if convicted.Raise the Age laws are a win for criminal justice reform advocates.  interrogatingjustice.org