Streets of ire

This summer, cities across the U.S. have reported frightening surges in youth violence. After a decade-long reprieve, what's gone wrong?

By Sarah Karnasiewicz

Read more: Crime, Violence, Poverty, Teenagers, Life

Aug. 25, 2006 | In cities across the country, from Oakland, Calif., to Hartford, Conn., to Orlando, Fla., the story of summer 2006 has been one of kids and killing. Nashville, Tenn.'s police department reports that the number of teens arrested for violent crimes within the first six months of 2006 increased 20 percent over 2005; in Washington, D.C, 14 murders occurred in the first 12 days of July, and juvenile crimes in particular have risen 82 percent. In August, Oakland police reported that in 2006 nearly 30 percent of the city's homicide victims -- 26 out of a total 88 -- have been under the age of 19, a frightening sum that if it continues on pace, will easily double the number of last year's casualties. Even Boston -- a city whose effective offensive on youth violence during the 1990s earned the nickname the "Boston Miracle" and became a model for crime prevention across the country -- is facing a dramatic reversal of fortune, looking this summer less like an example of success than a cautionary tale.

Thus far criminologists have quickly quashed speculation of an impending return to the dangerous days of the '80s and '90s with measured reminders that no single year-to-year data shift should be seen as a serious harbinger, but as the summer wanes with the violence unabated, the chorus of concerned voices has begun to grow. While conceding that not every major American city has suffered a surge in violence, John Roman, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center, says he believes a disturbing picture is becoming clear. "The particulars of what is happening are fairly constant around the country: There has been an increase in violent crime in everything except rape," he explains. "And there is enough of a deviation, and such a consistent picture across the country, that it is convincing that something larger has begun to shift." David Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, agrees that this is a national issue. "If you have your ear to the ground, you hear the exact same things from all over the country. There really are lots and lots and lots of cities having big increases -- meaning 50 and 100 percent jumps -- and huge violence problems."

Underscoring this spike, in June the FBI released a preliminary report indicating that in 2005 national violent crime figures surged 2.4 percent and homicide rates nearly 5 percent, the biggest single increase in 14 years. With the brunt of violence now being felt in midsize cities like Indianapolis, Kansas City, Mo., and Milwaukee -- not New York, Los Angeles and Chicago -- and the nature of the violence seemingly ever more random, this new cycle of crime raises a question that's grown unfamiliar after a decade-long reprieve: Why is there suddenly so much blood on our streets?

To those living and working in these troubled communities, explanations are few, but the problem is plain -- and made personal by the tears of stricken loved ones and scared neighbors. Stanley Pollack, the executive director of the Center for Teen Empowerment, a community youth organization in Boston, says that almost every young person he has spoken to this summer has been touched personally by the crime -- and it's crime of a terrifyingly arbitrary sort. "While all violence is senseless, it does seem as though the level of irrationality has grown much greater," he explains. "It's five boys come into a shop, get into a fight and stab someone. A kid is shot coming out of his door for reasons he doesn't know by someone he doesn't know. One girl's brother is shot in front of a party trying to break up a fight -- this is a good guy who's not done anything wrong -- he's just trying to break up a fight." Pollack's program played an instrumental role in stemming Boston's youth crisis in the early 1990s, and he is haunted now by how much things have changed for the worse, and how fast. He says that statistical projections indicate that there will be more than 600 shootings in Boston this year -- and that's even more than the height in the 1990s. "So, yes," he warns, "things seem to be moving very quickly to the state they were 15 years ago."

According to James Alan Fox, a criminologist and Northeastern University professor who served as an advisor to the Clinton White House on issues of youth violence and now writes a column for the Boston Herald, those numbers are spiking thanks largely to one group: teens. "Cities have looked at the numbers and found that the lion's share of their increase is youth-related. It's hard -- I don't like words like super-predator because I don't think that's an appropriate characterization and kids are actually impulsive not predatory. But the fact of the matter is we do have more at-risk kids in the population now and we do have more youth violence; whether you like it or not, that's the situation." Following Fox's logic, just as Boston served as a model for what went right with crime-prevention strategies in the 1990s, the city's current troubles can serve as a model for what can go wrong when efforts are not sustained. "We got a little too comfortable; as the crime rate dropped precipitously in the 1990s a lot of people said, Well, we don't really have to work at this anymore, why not divert resources into other areas or maybe get some tax cuts," Fox explains. "Crime is not something we can eliminate, but something we must be prepared to control."

Fox's list of missteps is long. "Last month in the Senate there was a hearing about cuts in federal spending for law enforcement -- and there have been huge cuts," he explains. "The COPS [Community Oriented Policing] program has been drastically reduced and other programs have been entirely eliminated. We've also seen spending for youth-related programs decline." Add to that stew a Congress that has shown little interest in standing up to the National Rifle Association or enforcing gun control restrictions, and indeed it does begin to look like killer kids are not the real problem, but rather the complacent system that has shortchanged them. "People don't want to spend money," Fox says. "But a few extra hundred dollars in your pocket in terms of a tax cut is very little consolation if you're staring at the wrong end of a gun."

Next page: Headlines fill with stories of strangers shooting one another over minor slights