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July 15, 2005
"Gang Violence" Declined 73% from 1994-2005
July 15th, 2005
‘Gang Violence’ Declined 73% from 1994-2003
Study shows ‘Gang-related’ violence accounted for 7%
of all homicide. High unemployment and low-income
strongest factors in ‘gang-related’ homicides
Washington, DC---According to a new report from the
Justice Policy Institute, despite a rash of
sensationalized cases surrounding gang violence, the
phenomenon actually decreased over 70 percent from
1994-2003.
In Ganging Up on Communities, researchers put many of
the current concerns about rising gang crime into
context, and analyze the need, and the impact of
additional federal laws to address the problem.
Currently, several new pieces of federal legislation
are being advanced to address the “gang crisis,”
federalizing law enforcement efforts that have
historically been the jurisdiction of the states, and
proposing laws to try more youth as adults. According
to the data from the policy brief, some of the
policies being proposed may exacerbate the country’s
crime problem, and steers resources away from local
and state groups that have shown success.
“While some communities still experience unacceptable
levels of crime, including youth crime and gang crime,
the data just doesn’t support elevating gangs to the
level of a “national crisis,”” said Jason Ziedenberg,
executive director of the Justice Policy Institute and co-author of the report. “We don’t need an additional layer of federal laws on top of the state laws to address this issue. We need to invest the resources in groups that have been proven successful in working with youth and gangs.”
In this policy brief, researchers highlight the
several legislative proposals call for new federal
powers to prosecute 16 and 17-year-old youth as adults
for gang-related violent crime. According to the FBI
Uniform Crime Reports, the number of people nationwide
reported to be arrested in 2003 for either a
“gangland” or “juvenile gang homicide” totaled 1,111—approximately 7% of the 16,503 homicide arrests that year. Of those, only 111 were reported to be under 18 years-of-age.
The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) reports
that, between 1994 and 2003, the rate of reported
violent victimizations by perceived gang members fell
from 5.2 per 1,000 to 1.4 per 1,000—a decline of 73%.
According to the NCVS, “violent crimes for which
victims identified the offender to be a gang member
peaked in 1996 at 10% of all violent crime and
decreased until 1998 to about 6%, not significantly
changing since.”
“Federalizing the gang issue by increasing criminal
penalties and loosening the criteria for deporting
youth is not the answer to the gang problem -- it has
the likely outcome of victimizing youth not involved
in criminal activity,” said Mai Fernandez, Chief
Operating Officer of the DC-based Latin American Youth
Center.
“In those communities where there is a gang problem, specialized law enforcement strategies paired with specially tailored employment and social services programs can make a huge difference in decreasing gang violence,” she added.
According to one study based on Los Angeles and
published in the Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection
and Critical Care, the strongest correlations with
gang violence were employment and income. In
communities where unemployment rates were between 14%
and 16%, there were 15 times as many gang homicides as
in neighborhoods where the unemployment rate was 4% to
7%.
Justice Policy Institute
Posted by lois at July 15, 2005 05:53 PM