Despite the increase over the past year, the juvenile arrest rate for violent crime has dropped by more than half since 1995, according to the report by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization. “The magnitude of the increase is small compared to the steep decline that came before,” wrote the report’s author, Jeffrey A. Butts, a sociologist who directs the institute’s Program on Youth Justice. “The rate of violent crime among young people is half of what it was in the 1990s.” In an interview, Butts said that the increase in juvenile arrests was to be expected after years of decline. “It looks like we’ve hit the bottom and things are starting to go up again, but it’s not time to panic,” he said. Continue reading Washington Post – Violent Crime Arrests Up for D.C. Juveniles

“It’s amazing — in the juvenile justice field, you pick up any rock and you find stuff like this,” said Jeffrey A. Butts, director of the Urban Institute’s Program on Youth Justice, who conducted a study of Mississippi’s training school population in 1989. Continue reading New York Times – Care of Juvenile Offenders in Mississippi is Faulted

Actually, I’m grossly understating the good news. As the Urban Institute notes in a recent study by Jeffrey Butts and Jeremy Travis, the drop in violent crimes among children under 18 was even bigger. Arrests for aggravated assault declined by 22 percent. They were down 25 percent for rape and 51 percent for robbery. Best of all, murder arrests plunged by 68 percent. All this happened at the same time that the number of youngsters was growing. “The rate of juvenile crime in 2000 was lower than at any time in the previous decade,” report Butts and Travis. Continue reading Chicago Tribune – “Delinquent” no Longer has to Follow “Juvenile”

But suddenly and inexplicably, the crime rate plummeted — even as the number of juveniles increased. And the rate of juvenile crimes led the decline, researchers Jeffrey Butts and Jeremy Travis report in a major study released recently by the Urban Institute. Continue reading Washington Post – On Crime, Youth Serves Up Some Good News