Challenge 1
Youth arrests for violent offenses overall remain historically low. However, post-pandemic, youth arrests for homicide and weapons surged.
Overall, arrests for youth violence declined 54 percent from 2000 to 2022, and in 2022, remained near historical lows.1
However, youth arrests for homicides have increased for a decade and surged in 2022 to never-before-seen levels.2
Arrests for weapons offenses spiked in 2022 to levels not seen for a decade.3
Challenge 2
Adolescents are increasingly struggling with challenges that can impact their well-being, and ultimately, risk to themselves or others. Public systems and providers are struggling to address these needs.
Adolescents are experiencing unprecedented mental health challenges, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
- 29 percent reported that their mental health was not good “most of the time or always.”4
- 40 percent felt sad or hopeless, compared to 26 percent in 2009.5
Adolescents are also experiencing significant trauma that can lead to self-harm, family conflict, violence, and system involvement.
- 55 percent experienced emotional abuse by an adult at home.6
- 12 percent reported physical abuse.7
Most states have historically lacked a formal adolescent behavioral health system. And only half of all young people with a major or severe depression episode receive needed treatment.8
Public agencies and providers are facing significant staffing challenges that are further undermining their ability to address youth’s needs.
- More than 85 percent cite moderate or severe challenges in hiring and retaining staff.9
- More than 80 percent report moderate or severe staffing challenges among service providers, significantly impacting service availability.10
Challenge 3
Most youth involved in the juvenile justice system have committed offenses that don’t involve physical harm to another person.11 State responses risk increasing the use of the justice system as a default response to adolescents in crisis, causing more harm than good.
Justice system involvement negatively affects the entire course of young people’s lives.
Youth formally processed by the juvenile justice system experience far worse outcomes in the 5 years after arrest as compared to similar youth who were diverted.12
Youth are often pushed into the justice system to get them services or hold them “accountable,” not for public safety reasons.
Youth of color are more likely to be pushed into the justice system than White youth; disparities have worsened over the last 15 years.13
The Opportunity
States and locales should develop a new vision and approach for comprehensively addressing the needs of vulnerable youth and families to both protect public safety and improve outcomes for youth. The Collaborating for Youth and Public Safety Initiative can help them do that.
Endnotes
1 Data regarding arrests for youth under the age of 18 between 2000 and 2022 comes from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. We used SRS data for all analyses involving youth arrests between 2000 and 2020, drawing from the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program data: Arrests by Age, Sex, and Race dataset released by the FBI and cleaned and aggregated by Jacob Kaplan. For all analyses related to 2022 youth arrests for index crimes, we used NIBRS national estimates produced by BJS and RTI. 2021 data was collected by the UCR and therefore is not reported.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System 2023, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/index.htm.
5 Ibid.
6 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey (ABES),” https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/abes.htm; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS),” https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/index.htm.
7 Ibid.
8 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, “2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) Releases,” accessed September 18, 2024, https://www.samhsa.gov/data/release/2022-national-survey-drug-use-and-health-nsduh-releases.
9 Josh Weber and Christina Gilbert, “Systems in Crisis: Revamping the Juvenile Justice Workforce and Core Strategies for Improving Public Safety and Youth Outcomes” (CSG Justice Center, 2023), https://projects.csgjusticecenter.org/systems-in-crisis/systems-in-crisis-brief/.
10 Ibid.
11 Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, “Easy Access to Juvenile Court Statistics (EZAJCS),” accessed September 18, 2024, https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezajcs/; Statistical Briefing Book, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/statistical-briefing-book.
12 Elizabeth Cauffman et al., “Crossroads in juvenile justice: The impact of initial processing decision on youth 5 years after first arrest,” Development and Psychopathology (2020): 1–14, https://faculty.lsu.edu/pfricklab/pdfs/juvenilejustice-pdfs/dpcauffmanetalmaincrossroadsweb.pdf
13 We rely on the FBI’s SRS data to evaluate racial disparities at arrest between 2000 and 2020, and EZAJCS to look at racial and ethnic disparities from referral to adjudication between 2005 and 2021. We measured racial and ethnic disparity using a relative rate index (RRI). The RRI provides a standardized comparison between two different groups on a particular event or outcome. To determine the RRI, we first calculated the rate of an event (e.g., arrest, referral, petition) for each racial and ethnic group by dividing the number of youth in the group who experienced the event by the total population of youth in that group. Population data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. Then we divided the rate for the group of interest (e.g., Black youth) by the rate for the reference group, which is always White youth here.