IN the waning days of the gubernatorial race, be prepared to hear a bewildering and contradictory set of claims about the extent and nature of juvenile crime in Maryland and what should be done to prevent and reduce such crime. There is probably no greater political football than teen crime and punishment policy.
Politicians seem unable to resist scoring points on this critical and highly emotional topic, yet it is precisely because of the understandably emotional and passionate feelings of the public that politicians of all stripes should treat the issue with care, precision and objectivity.
Some little-known truths about youths, crime and punishment might be helpful to voters confronting what masquerades as fact about the level and type of crime juveniles commit. Juvenile crime, by its nature, is measured by numbers of arrests, not actual juvenile crime.
The truth is, juvenile arrest figures vary regardless of how much juvenile crime there is. For a crime to be classified as "juvenile crime," it means reported crime is investigated and solved with the arrest of a youngster.
This, of course, is easily influenced by the priority police give to particular types of crime and the places where crime is committed. Very aggressive policing for, say, curfew violations, truancy or fighting can surely produce more juvenile arrests. But that doesn't mean there's been more truancy or fights than before.
Likewise, if police place more effort, time and manpower on certain types of crime or particular neighborhoods, arrests for other, perhaps lower-priority crimes, may go down. But it doesn't mean there is less juvenile crime; just fewer arrests.
Community policing strategies that handle less-serious fights with a problem-solving approach that emphasizes not arrest and prosecution but rather referral for conflict resolution and anger management, would likely produce fewer juvenile arrests for violence. While a different police response may produce less violence in the future, at least in the short run, fewer arrests of kids for violence does not necessarily signal real reductions in juvenile violence.
The point is, juvenile crime statistics are based on juvenile arrest statistics and thus such statistics are imperfect and potentially misleading indicators of the trend in juvenile crime. Overall crime is typically drawn from statistics on changes in all reported crime, where it doesn't matter if there has been an arrest. Juvenile arrest statistics can, of course, only be generated if there has been an arrest.
