Is Your Child a Victim of Teen Violence?

Stories of violence by and against youth explode from the news like gunshots from a passing car. It would seem that America is under attack by armed teenagers. During the early 1980s, about a thousand murders were committed by teens each year in the United States (Eisenman). By the middle of the 1990s, that had grown to over three thousand per year, or almost 10 percent of all murders (Eisenman). Numbers like that make it sound like teen violence is a growing epidemic, an impression that is proven to be true by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, which now identify teen violence as a major public health problem.

Talking about teen violence in terms of murder is the clear thing to do because of the dramatic certainty and loss that death brings, but the epidemic—if that is actually what it is—includes much more than murder. The statistics for armed robbery, assault, rape, and carjackings by juveniles in the United States are higher than in any other country in the world (Eisenman). The teenage perpetrators and victims come from every walk of life and every ethnic background. People of all ages are shocked, saddened, and frightened by this news, but no one is more immediately affected by the epidemic of teen violence than teenagers themselves.

Violence is any physical conduct that causes injury or harm to another person (Webster). Teen violence means that the victim, the perpetrator, or both are between twelve and twenty years old (Eisenman). Teen violence includes murder, shooting, stabbing, beating, rape, robbery, and even simply threatening someone with physical harm (Eisenman). All are against the law. The terms teen, youth, and juvenile are used when discussing violence by and against young people. A teen is a person between thirteen and twenty years old (Webster). Youth is a more general term applied to individuals between ages twelve and twenty-four (Webster). Juvenile has a precise meaning, especially to police and judges, since the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officially defines juvenile crime as illegal acts committed by persons ages ten through seventeen (Eisenman).

The extent of teen violence seems great, yet there are rays of hope. Figures released by the FBI at the end of 1996 showed that in 1995, violent crime rates among juveniles dropped for the first time in seven years (Fenwick). Overall, violent crime was down 4 percent for teens under age seventeen, 7 percent among kids age ten to fourteen (Fenwick). Juvenile arrests for murder also fell, 14 percent less than 1994 and 23 percent less than 1993 (Fenwick). Furthermore, rape arrests in teens dropped 4 percent, robbery arrests dropped 1 percent, and aggravated assault arrests dropped a small but effective 2 percent (Fenwick).