TEEN CRIME WAVE CALLED MYTH

Study finds no more juvenile violence than decades -- Cox News Service

Washington Fear rather than fact Is fueling unnecessarily harsh juvenile
justice policies throughout the United States, according to a study by a
Berkeley professor was released yesterday.

The MacArthur Foundation's two-year study of juvenile crime statistics
charges that laws aimed at youthful lawbreakers are based on "deeply flawed
analyses of juvenile violence statistics."

"We're not any more violent than we were 10 or 20 years ago. We're just
paying more attention to the violence," said Franklin Zimring, author of
the study and a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Zimrlng's findings will be published as a book by Oxford University Press
but were released at a news conference yesterday.

The study was paid for by the private MacArthur Foundation, which is best
known for its annual "genius grants" but also supports public policy research.

Zimring said a change in how police report juvenile crimes, particularly
assault and aggravated assault has resulted in "an artificial crime wave."

Zlmrlng said his study shows "what you find out about aggravated assault
and assault since mid.1980s, quite independent of whether youth behavior
has been changing, police behavior been changing significantly." Police
have been reducing the threshold of what constitutes assault and aggravated
assault, the study charges, resulting In the apparent increase In crime.

Some Other major findings of Zimring's Study include:

Arrest rates for juvenile, ages 13 to 17 accused of rape and robbery show
no significant trend either up or down since 1980 and have actually
declined slightly Over the last five years.

The homicide arrest rate for juveniles ages 13 to 17 rose shot between 1984
and 1992 but fell by more than a third by 1996, according to FBI crime
figures.

The number of juveniles arrested for homicide dropped an addItional 18
percent in 1997.

Zimring said that in order to counter what is seen as a "coming storm of
juvenile violence," many states have enacted laws that lower the age at
which juveniles can be charged as adults for certain crimes

Evidence of a juvenile crime wave, "either current or on the horizon, is no
more substantial than the evidence that supports the existence of the Loch
Ness monster," Zimring said.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski