Research by the California Department of Justice’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center (CJSC) has shown that crimes committed by youth in the state have dropped to an all-time low level. Arrests of young people under the age of 18 have declined by 20 percent from 2010 to 2011. This number is the lowest since records began being collected in 1954, according to CJSC.
The CJSC brief is quick to point out that prior to 1975 record keeping was less detailed yet concludes that today’s numbers may “understate the youth crime decline:”
California’s rates of serious youth crime and incarceration have fallen faster over the last 40 years than the nation’s rates, though national statistics are less complete
Prior to the 1990s, California’s youth were considerably more likely to be arrested than youth elsewhere in the country; now the rates are comparable. The drop in youth offending parallels a larger 50% decline in the numbers of crimes reported to law enforcement in California over the last 20 years.
In trying to determine what the key factors were for the decline in crimes committed by youth, CJSC also looked at several factors that provided insufficient explanations.
Structural explanations. Structural changes, such as changes in statistics gathering, police tactics, and laws, affect arrest totals independently of actual changes in offending. If law enforcement agencies are arresting more or fewer people per actual offense, crime statistics can change without actual changes in offending.
Demographic explanations. Demographic change can affect overall crime rates without changing behaviors. California’s youth population has grown rapidly by 3 million since 1950, and by 1 million since 1990. California’s youth population also has transitioned from 80% non-Latino white in the 1950s to 73% nonwhite4 today (Department of Finance, 2012). While modern authorities do not attribute criminality to any particular race or ethnicity, it is clear that California arrest rates are historically higher for Latino and African American populations than for non-Latino whites. Given these trends, the state’s large demographic changes over the last 60 years should have predicted somewhat higher, not lower, youth arrest rates.
“Get tough” policy explanations. According to conservative “get tough” proponents, stronger policing, longer sentences, and more use of incarceration should translate into lower crime rates due both to the removal of offenders from society and the deterrent effect on potential offenders. In fact, California has done the opposite. Youth today are not more intensively policed. Arrests for youth-targeted status offenses such as curfews, truancy, incorrigibility, and running away have fallen to record lows. Arrests for curfew violations, in particular, have fallen from over 20,000 per year in the late 1990s to 8,441 in 2011. In 2011, arrests of youths for the largest single drug category, marijuana, fell by 9,000 to a level not seen since before the 1980s implementation of the “war on drugs.”
Family and community explanations. Theories relating to the crime generating (or deterrent) nature of personal associations, family influences, and community norms also seem inadequate to explain the large reduction in youth crime.
So, what are the factors associated with the decline in youth crimes? CJSC offers the following:
Marijuana law reforms. Effective in 1976, SB 95 downgraded low-level possession (less than one ounce) of marijuana from a felony to a misdemeanor, and effective on January 1, 2011, SB 1449 reduced most simple marijuana possessions to an infraction involving a mere citation rather than criminal arrest. The 1976 reform simply transferred a few thousand marijuana arrests from felonies to misdemeanors, affecting these categories but not overall or drug arrest totals. The 2011 reform did reduce youth marijuana possession arrests by 61% in one year, from nearly 15,000 in 2010 to 5,800 in 2011, reducing overall drug and total arrests in tandem.
Socioeconomic explanations. Given the close connection between poverty level and arrest rates, the improvement in the economic well being among the state’s youth might have contributed to their crime decline over the last 15-20 years. Overall, California youths’ economic standing has changed little since 1990, though youth today are poorer than those of 40-50 years ago. In 1970, 12.5% of California’s children and adolescents under age 18 grew up in families with incomes below federal poverty guidelines; in 1990, 18%; in 2000, 19%, and in 2010, 18% (United States Census Bureau, 2012; KidsCount, 2012). However, the highest violence rates by far involve youth living in communities where poverty is concentrated. Over the last decade, the percentage of youths residing in communities where 30% or more of the residents are impoverished fell by 9% in California even as it increased by 29% in other states (KidsCount, 2012).
Source: Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
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