By Mike Males, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, October 23, 2019
The good news: California’s arrests of youths plunged another 17% in 2018 to the lowest levels ever recorded. The bad news: An arrested youth’s odds of being formally sentenced by a juvenile or adult court (rather than receiving informal sanctions) and of being incarcerated are rising rapidly. What underlies these trends?
The crime and violence plummet is phenomenal. In 2018, 84 Californians under age 18 were arrested for homicide, down 87% from 658 in 1990.
Here’s a statistic that defies common misconceptions about crime and violence today. The homicide arrest rate of the racially diverse teenaged youth in California’s 15 largest cities (including Los Angeles and Oakland), 3.1 per 100,000 population age 10-17 in 2018, has fallen below the homicide arrest rate of middle-aged white people in the state’s rural, inland counties that voted for President Donald Trump (5.1 per 100,000 white people ages 40-69). No expert saw that development coming.
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