Press Coverage

Maybe teens these days really do have it worse Taken together, several recent reports paint  a frightening picture of our kids' world. By: RUBÉN ROSARIO Pioneer Press Columnist

Posted on Mon, Jul. 22, 2002

Each generation of teen-agers likes to think, after its members reach middle age, that it had it tougher growing up. I thought so, until I read three reports released last week on serious issues affecting today's youths.

One report found an alarming rate in suicidal tendencies among teen-agers. Another revealed that teen-agers are twice as likely as any other age group to be victims of violent crime. A third underlined a widening disparity in arrest and incarceration rates of Latino youths — one of the fastest-growing groups in Minnesota and the rest of the nation.

The reports remind us that being a kid these days may not be as easy as we remember it.

Awareness and early intervention are two common problem-solving threads to all three issues.

According to the most recent National Household Survey on Drug Use, 37 percent of the estimated 3 million youths at risk for suicide in 2000 actually tried to kill themselves during the previous 12 months. Minnesotan and other Midwestern youths ranked second in the at-risk group, with the risk similar regardless of rural, suburban or urban residence.

Most tellingly, only a third of those youths at risk received mental health treatment, and fewer than a fifth of survey respondents ages 12 to 17 received treatment from professionals, social workers or counselors.

One lesson here, among many, is that parents should be alert for red flags and should not dismiss teen-agers' concerns or behavioral changes as irrelevant or as fleeting youth identity crises.

In another troubling report, National Council on Crime and Delinquency researchers determined that people ages 12 to 19 — roughly 14 percent of the population — account for 25 percent of victims of murders, assaults and other violent crimes. Youths who are poor and minority are the most at risk for victimization. And that victimization can have long-term consequences, including school difficulties, delinquency, mental health issues and teen-age pregnancies.

The report has prompted creation of the Teen Victim Project, a joint effort with the National Center for Crime Victims that outlines an intervention and prevention strategy. Providing quality victim services to runway and homeless youths and those caught in the juvenile justice system is one recommendation.

Juvenile offenders are the subjects of a study by the Youth Law Center's Building Blocks for Youth initiative in Washington, D.C.

The report, by researchers at Michigan State University, analyzed national and state information and found that youths of both sexes of Latino descent receive more punitive sentences and treatment for the same types of offenses when compared with their white peers. For violent crimes, the report found, Latino youths were five times as likely to be imprisoned as white youths who committed the same offenses.

"They are arrested more often, stopped more often, detained more often, incarcerated more often and for longer periods of time," said Nancy Walker, co-author of the report and associate director of the university's Institute for Children, Youth and Families.

Bias, language barriers and cultural misinterpretations contribute to the disparity. Researchers think the problem may be even more pronounced than the numbers would indicate, because most states and the federal government do not identify Latinos as a distinct group in documents, usually simply counting them as white.

In Minnesota, which has a minority population of about 12 percent, nonwhite offenders accounted for 56 percent of secure-facility placements among youths in 1997 and 70 percent of youth transfers to adult courts in 1998.

"The disparity is here as well as it is everywhere else,'' said Jerry Ascher, juvenile justice specialist for the state's Department of Economic Security.

The report, among a long list of recommendations, called for more alternative sentencing strategies that would curb the tendency to route offenders early in life into a criminal justice system that traditionally has done little to lower recidivism rates or correct criminal or self-destructive behavior.