Why should youth violence prevention be a high priority for community efforts?
Austin has a youth violence problem.
Youth violence in the Austin and Travis County area is significant and growing. This echoes a nationwide trend of growing homicides committed by youth over the past decade. The Texas Department of Public Safety2 documents over 19,000 arrests of school-age youth (aged 10 through 20) during the last 10 years for violent crimes. The arrests break down into the following categories:
- Rape — 80 arrests
- Murder — 101
- Aggravated robbery — 1,188
- Aggravated assault — 2,006
- Other assaults — 15,790
Worse, for four of the five categories these numbers have increased over the second half of the decade. Specifically, from 2003 to 2007 arrests of school-age youth for:
- murder and manslaughter have increased by 200% (from four to 12 arrests),
- aggravated robbery is up by 217% (from 46 to 146),
- aggravated assault increased by 119% (from 107 to 235), and
- other assaults are up by 84% (from 1,201 to 2,211).
See details the source data for these arrest statistics.
This alarming trend corresponds with nationwide statistics. A recent study by Northeastern University criminologists James Alan Fox and Marc L. Swatt found that the number of young black men and teenagers who either killed or were killed in shootings has risen at an alarming rate since 20023. The study noted that while national homicide rates had changed little, “from 2002 to 2007, the number of homicides involving black male juveniles as victims rose by 31% and as perpetrators by 43%. In terms of gun killings involving this same population subgroup, the increases were even more pronounced: 54% for young black male victims and 47% for young black male perpetrators.”
Though the City of Austin rightly boasts as being the second safest city in the country; we need to remind ourselves that those figures are relative. The Council on At-Risk Youth considers the violent crime arrest rates for school age youth to be unacceptable and inconsistent with other standards we set for our community.