Youth Violence in the United States: Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography

This is my own work, based on my own ideas and I state that it is not the work of any other person. I declare that I have fully referenced the works of others in my paper.

In my Annotated Bibliography I am focusing on crime among young people in United States, I will focus on economic conditions linked to crime. I will also look at how juvenile detention centers and the negatives and positives of them being use by young people who are sent to them rather than an ‘adult prison’ for their offence. Youth violence is a major concern for the past 25 years in law and behavioral sciences the United States statistics show an increase of youth violence (Ewing, 2001).

According to USPHS in 2002, every year in the late 1990s an increase in ten times as many youths had said they have participated in some form of violent behavior which could have resulted in the killing or serious injury to another person. In the law point of view their main focus was to reduce the age at which violent juvenile offenders may be tried as adults (Ewing, 2001). In the behavioral science point of view, they are focusing their research on understanding youth violence, the causes, prevention methods and how it is looked at and dealt with by law and society (Ewing, 2001)

Hoffman, J. (2004) ‘Youth Violence in the United States’ Youth violence, resilience, and rehabilitation. pp.5-11.

The discussions on youth violence focus on two periods 1983-1994 and 1995-2000 (Hoffman, 2004). I am calling the 1983-1994 the first period and 1995-2000 the second period. In the first period the number of adolescent deaths, injuries caused by violence and arrest for youth homicides increased, during 1985-1991 homicide rates increased drastically by 154%, during 1985-1993 arrest of people aged between 10-17 also increased to 154% (Hoffman, 2004). During the second period this was opposite, crimes and homicides involving young people decreased, between 1993-1997 homicide rates decreased by 34% (Hoffman, 2004), weapon related arrests decreased by 24% by 1997 according to Snyder in 1997. Homicide is the second leading cause of death for young people aged between 15-24 and third for young people aged between 5-14 (Hoffman, 2004). According to Snyder and Sickmund in 1995 homicide victims aged between 10-17 have a greater risk of being killed by a friend, most homicide victims are shot to death and are mostly male. There is an increase use of firearms and because of this increase there is also a further increase in spinal cord injuries due to victims of gunshot wounds surviving.

Youth violence has been the biggest focus of the criminal justice system, many of the nation's youth are taking part in a juvenile justice system. The violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 was used to treat juveniles as adults to decrease crime by using a harsher approach but according to a study where youth were transferred to an adult criminal court in Florida resulted in an increase in crimes for the juveniles who were tried as adults compared to juveniles whose cases were done in Juvenile court (Washington Crime News Services 1996a). In 1996 a report done by the American Bar Association seen problems with juvenile representation, where lawyers had 500 cases per year which resulted in poor/inadequate representation (Juvenile Justice Digest 1996c).

This book is relevant to my theme because I study law and my overall theme is about crime among youth in United States. I found that that even though the crime rates dropped in the second period I discussed the crime rates in the United States are the highest recorded yet. There were 2 experiments used that I researched in the book which shows there is a lack of commitment to the youth as we can see the youth who were tried as adults to create a harsher punishment but this actually backfired as the youth tried as adults increased crime and the experiment with the American Bar Association showed me that lawyers had too much going on to represent the juvenile adequately which could result in unfair judgements due to poor representation. Overall, this article increased my knowledge with facts and statistics which I found to be very useful in my research.

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Britt, C. (1994) ‘Crime and Unemployment Among Youths in the United States, 1958-1990' American Journal of Economics and Sociology.

Sociologists and Economists have an interest in the link between crime and economic conditions, there is very little research of the effect of economic conditions on criminal behavior of youth which baffles me because most crime is committed by youth. This articles main focus is on the existing and delay effect of youth employment on crime among youth by using data of unemployment and arrest time series of people aged from 16-19 years old in the United States from 1958-1990 (Britt, 1994). There are two main views of the link between crime and economic conditions one is the motivational perspective and Greenberg in 1985 did research where he applied this view with age distribution of crime hoping to explain why youth have the highest levels of crime he stated that employment is important to youth to obtain materialistic things etc. When your young you are dependent on your parents and when your parents are not giving you financial support, they need to get a job but getting a job when your young can be hard so they are not getting independent income which results in them getting the materialistic things (clothes) which can increase the motivation to crime (Britt, 1994).

Another view is the opportunity perspectives which sees crime decreasing when there are poor economic conditions, because when people become unemployed, they may remain in their home which decreases exposure to potential offenders (Britt, 1994). This suggests that when unemployment levels are high then youth are more likely to be at home because they can’t leisure activities according to Greenberg in 1985 and also they may have adults keeping an eye on them where as when youths are in a good well-paying job they be looked over because they have a good job so why would they commit crime they are supposed to be well behaved and also they would be working a lot so wouldn’t be at home to be supervised (Britt, 1994).

I find this article to be related to my theme because it is giving me a factor/influence that may cause a youth to commit crime and gives me two types of perspectives on economic conditions linked to youth crime. As I've stated there is little research on the link of the two and researched has failed to provide a clear set of findings. The Uniform Crime Reports show there was both a positive and negative relationship between both, this research has been limited due to short time series used in each study (Britts, 1994). I found it hard to find research for a factor, but this has given me knowledge as I had limited research so overall, I have found this article to be helpful in my topic.

Flowers, R., 2012.’Delinquency prevention and control strategies’ Kids Who Commit Adult Crimes. pp.182-185.

There is a lot of measure put into place to prevent juveniles from committing some sort of crime or violence act. According to Flowers, R in 2012, the successful programs put into place for prevention are as follows: prenatal to age six educational programs, classroom management for organization and instruction, curriculum focusing on conflict resolution and violence prevention, peer counselling and mediation, recreational programs for after school, firearms intervention strategies, training of parents, marriage and family therapy, gang prevention strategies, vocational training, policing strategies and mobilizing of community programs (Flowers, 2012).

There has been loads of strategies to reduce gun access and use by juveniles an example of this is the Boston Gun Project’s Operation Ceasefire which uses a multijurisdictional approach to firearm procession and homicides of males under 25 dropped by 70% as a result according to Kennedy in 1998 (Flowers, 2012). Another successful strategy for preventing gang violence was the Gang Resistance Education and Training program which was a school-based program according to Esbensen and Osgood in 1997 this resulted with the kids who completed the program to have less involvement with gangs (Flowers, 2012). There is an increase of school shouting with bullying as the main factor so there was a program put in place in Norway in 1980, where Olweus found in 1993 a reduction in bullying, victimization and other delinquent activities (Flowers, 2012). The main focus of this article was to show us ways the prevention strategies have worked with examples, in my essay I have given an introduction to youth crime and a factor affecting it so I ended it with prevention strategies, I found this article very useful in giving me information provided with facts, which concluded my knowledge in the theme I choose.

‘The current response we have to the youth violence has problems for health, development and wellbeing of the young both inside and outside correction systems’ ~ (Hoffman, 2004). I started off this topic with having knowledge of very little but as I researched I gained knowledge of facts and information I haven't previously seen before, I think the research in finding out the topic of United States youth violence is very broad but there should be more systems put in place in preventing it.

References

1. (Austin et al 2000) - Austin, J., K.D. Johnson, and M. Gregoriou. 2000. Juveniles in adult prisons and jails: a national assessment. Washington, D.C.: George Washington University Institute on Crime, Justice and Corrections and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency.
2. (Britt, 1994) - Britt, C. (1994). Crime and Unemployment Among Youths in the United States, 1958-1990. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, [online] 53(1), pp.99-109. Available at: http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=78a64fbd-f474-4927-9712-3e4adb5942de%40sessionmgr4007 [Accessed 3 Mar. 2020].
3. (Ewing, 2001) - Ewing, C. (2001). Introduction to this issue: youth violence. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, [online] 19(1), pp.1-2. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bsl.422 [Accessed 3 Mar. 2020].
4. (Esbensen, Osgood, 1997) - Esbensen, F., and D. W. Osgood (1997). National Education of G.R.E.A.T. Research in Brief. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.
5. (Flowers, 2012) - Flowers, R., 2012. Kids Who Commit Adult Crimes. Binghamton: Taylor and Francis, pp.182-185.
6. (Hoffman, 2004) - Hoffman, J. (2004). Youth violence, resilience, and rehabilitation. New York: LFB Scholarly Pub., pp.5-11.
7. (Juvenile Justice Digest 1996c) - Juvenile Justice Digest 1996c. Washington Crime News Services. Fairfax, VA. January 4, p.2.
8. (Kennedy, 1998) - Kennedy, D. M. (1998). Pulling Levers: Getting Deterrence Right. National Institute of Justice Journal 7:2-8.
9. (Olweus, 1993) - Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do . Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
10. (Snyder 2000) - Synder, 2000 Juvenile arrests 1999 . Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
11. (Sickmund and Wan 1999) - Sickmund, M. and Y. Wan. 2001. Census of juveniles in residential placement databook. Detailed offense profile by sex for the United States, 1999 .Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.