Hundreds of news stories and expert commentaries, with few exceptions, depict juvenile crime as soaring, becoming more violent, and involving ever-younger killers and criminals. Occasionally, youth crime is depicted as declining, but only when interest groups are positioned to take credit. A typical recent news story, “Younger and Twice as Violent ” (see Anderson Cooper 360 ‚” citing the murders of 28 Chicago schoolchildren in the previous year, declared “youth violence is on the rise around…
Blog Mar 12, 2010
The Myth of an “Immigrant Crime Wave”
American Conservative publisher Ron Unz has always taken a refreshingly wonkish approach to public policy. His latest, His-Panic , compares national imprisonment and urban crime rates involving Latinos versus other US populations to challenge “talk TV sensationalists and axe-grinding ideologues who have fallen for a myth of immigrant lawlessness.” Unz’s findings have fueled outrage among anti-immigrant forces. CJCJ has taken a different approach to analyzing crime, but our conclusions…
Blog Mar 9, 2010
More Abuse in Youth Prisons
In the two most recent blogs, Dan Macallair called attention to the continued abuse being reported by the news media. He first noted reports dating back to the 19 th century in the San Francisco Industrial School, noting that this was an institution created in an era that began with the New York House of Refuge, which was abusive in the extreme and eventually had to be closed. Then he jumped on the proverbial “time machine” and took us to present-day Texas and California — same story, more…
Blog Feb 24, 2010
Abuse in the LA County Juvenile Justice System
In my previous blog I wrote about the endemic nature of abuse in juvenile institutions. No sooner had I written that blog than the following article appeared in the Los Angeles Times regarding the beating and molestation of youths under the custody of the Los Angeles Probation Department. The article’s authors highlighted incidents where staff were actually prosecuted for particularly egregious criminal acts including sexual exploitation and beatings of youth in their custody. In one instance a…
Blog Feb 17, 2010
Abuse in Youth Correctional Institutions
One of the most common examples of widespread abuse in American juvenile correctional institutions is the callous and malicious treatment often employed by institutional staff. Institutional abuse can mean many things, but usually refers to the physical or emotional cruelty inflicted on youth by staff. This pernicious reality has been constant throughout American history since the opening of the nation’s first youth correctional facility in 1825 — the New York House of Refuge. Occasionally,…