Serious School Crime and Juvenile Crime Continues to Decline.

The Drop in School Violence:

• In all survey years from 1992 to 1999, school-aged children were at least 70 times more likely to be murdered away from school than they were to be murdered at school. By comparison, 16 children are killed by gunfire every two days in America, and 16 children die at the hands of their parents or guardians every three days in America. Given the size of the school age population (52 million), this means that there was a 1 in 3 million chance that a youth would be shot fatally in a school.
• The most recent available data from the Department of Education shows that more serious victimizations happen away from school than at school. In 2000, students were more than two times as likely to be victims of serious violent crime away from school as at school.
• Between 1995 and 2001, the percentage of students who reported being victims of crime at school decreased from 10% to 6%.
• The Centers on Disease Control reports that there has been a 30% decline in youths bringing weapons to school, and a 29% decline in overall school crime.
• Between 1993 and 2001, the percentage of students in grades 9 through 12 who were threatened or injured with a weapon on school property in the past 12 months remained relatively constant-between 7 and 9%.

The Fall in Juvenile Violent Crime:

• Between 1994 and 2000, the youth arrest rate for Violent Crime Index offenses fell 41%.
• The youth murder arrest rate fell 74% from its peak in 1993 to 2000, when it reached its lowest level since the 1960s.
• All youth under age 24 accounted for 32% of the increase in violent crime arrests between 1980 and 1994, but they generated 58% of the subsequent decline in arrests between 1994 and 2000.

Despite the fact that more schools are safe, and becoming safer, Americans fear that school violence is on the rise.

• In 1999, when there was approximately a one in 2 million chance of a child dying a violent death in a school 71% of respondents thought it was very likely or likely that a school shooting could happen in their community.
• According to polling by USA Today in 1998 and following the Columbine shooting in 1999, respondents were 49% more likely to report being fearful of schools in 1999 than in 1998.
• In 1998, 62 percent of adults polled by the Building Blocks for Youth Initiative believed youth crime was on the increase, at a time when it had dropped for five years to a 25-year low in the government's largest crime survey.

America's fear of school shootings is leading to policies that harm kids.

• Suspensions have increased steadily for all students, rising from approximately 1.7 million (or 3.7% of students) in 1974, to 3.1 million (or 6.9%) of students in 1997. African American students are suspended at roughly 2.3 times the rate of White students nationally.
• In Mississippi, five high school students were arrested and jailed for throwing peanuts on a school bus. After they were released from jail, the students received a bus "suspension," and ended up dropping out because they had no transportation to get to school.
• In Denton County, Texas, a 13-year-old was asked to write a "scary" Halloween story for a class assignment. When the child wrote a story that talked about shooting up a school, he received both a passing grade, and was referred to the school principal's office. The school officials called the police, and the child spent six days in jail before the courts confirmed that no crime had been committed.

Media Coverage of School Shootings and Juvenile Crime are driving American's fears.

• Three quarters (76%) of the public say they form their opinions about crime from what they see or read in the news, more than three times the number who state that they get their primary information on crime from personal experience (22%).
• In a Los Angeles Times poll, 80% of respondents stated that the media's coverage of violent crime had increased their personal fear of being a victim.
• A 1998 report by Public Agenda found that daily TV news viewers were more likely to think that crime and drugs were Baltimore's number one problem than were those who watch the news less frequently (67% vs. 42%).

Sources:

Brooks, Kim, Schiraldi, Vincent and Ziedenberg, Jason. School House Hype: Two Years Later. Washington, D.C.: The Justice Policy Institute, 2000. Available online from the Justice Policy Institute at: http://www.justicepolicy.org/article.php?id=46.

Butts, Jeffrey and Travis, Jeremy. 2002. The Rise and Fall of American Youth Violence: 1980 to 2000. Washington, DC: Urban Institute. Available online from the Urban Institute at: http://www.urban.org.

Dorfman, Lori and Schiraldi, Vincent. Off Balance: Youth, Race & Crime in the News. Washington, D.C.: Building Blocks for Youth, 2001. Available online from the Building Blocks for Youth initiative at: http://www.buildingblocksforyouth.org.

Snyder, Howard. 2002. Juvenile Arrests 2000. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Indicators of School Crime and Safety, 2002. National Center for Education Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Available online from the National Center for Education Statistics: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2003/2003009a.pdf.

This fact sheet was prepared by Jason Ziedenberg of the Justice Policy Institute.