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1 Department of JusticeOffice of Justice ProgramsOffice of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention October 2001 Homicides of Children and YouthDavid Finkelhor and Richard OrmrodThe Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is committed toimproving the Justice system s response to crimes against Children . OJJDP recognizesthat Children are at increased risk for crime victimization. Not only are Children the vic-tims of many of the same crimes that victimize adults, they are subject to other crimes,like child abuse and neglect, that are specific to childhood.

2 The impact of these crimeson young victims can be devastating, and the violent or sexual victimization of childrencan often lead to an intergenerational cycle of violence and abuse. The purpose ofOJJDP s Crimes Against Children Series is to improve and expand the Nation s effortsto better serve child victims by presenting the latest information about child victimization,including analyses of crime victimization statistics, studies of child victims and their spe-cial needs, and descriptions of programs and approaches that address these needs.

3 A Message From OJJDPH omicides are always tragic, but oursympathies are heightened when thevictim is a young child or , the deaths of juveniles raiseunderstandable public , research statistics sel-dom claim the broad audience of themorning newspaper or the eveningnews. This Bulletin, part of OJJDP sCrimes Against Children Series,draws on FBI and other data to pro-vide a statistical portrait of juvenilehomicide is the only major cause ofchildhood deaths that has increasedover the past three decades. In 1999,some 1,800 juveniles, or 3 per100,000 of the juvenile popula-tion, were homicide victims a ratesubstantially higher than those ofother developed countries.

4 At thesame time, murders of juveniles areinfrequent in many areas of ourcountry. In 1997, 85 percent counties had no Homicides Bulletin offers detailed informa-tion about overall patterns and victimage groups. Specific types of juvenilehomicide victimization are discussedin further detail, including maltreat-ment Homicides , abduction homi-cides, and school , initiatives designed to preventhomicides of Children and Youth (juveniles) are explored. Given theunacceptable rate of such crimes,much remains to be of Children and Youth , the ulti-mate form of juvenile victimization, havereceived a great deal of deserved publicityin recent , while images of PollyKlaas and student victims at ColumbineHigh School are vivid in the public s mind,statistics on juvenile murder victims arenot.

5 Substantial misunderstandings existabout the magnitude of and trends in juve-nile homicide and the types of Children atrisk of becoming victims of different typesof Bulletin gives a brief statistical por-trait of various facets of child and youthhomicide victimization in the UnitedStates. It draws heavily on homicidedata from the Federal Bureau of Investi-gation s (FBI s) Supplementary HomicideReports (SHRs), which are part of theBureau s Uniform Crime Reporting Pro-gram; however, it also relies on a varietyof other studies and statistical of the findings presented in thisBulletin include the following:uIn 1999, about 1,800 juveniles (a rate per 100,000) were victims of homi-cide in the United States.

6 This rate issubstantially higher than that of anyother developed of juveniles in the UnitedStates are unevenly distributed, bothgeographically and are substantially higher forAfrican American juveniles and forjuveniles in certain jurisdictions. Yet,85 percent of all counties had nohomicides of juveniles in of young Children (age 5 andyounger), Children in middle childhood1 Strictly speaking, murder and homicide are not iden-tical; however, in this Bulletin the terms are some-times used interchangeably to improve areas than in rural and smaller urban areas.

7 In 1997, 85 percent of all did not have a single homicide ofa juvenile, while five highly urban coun-ties (Chicago, IL; Detroit, MI; Los Angeles,CA; New York, NY; and Philadelphia, PA)accounted for one-fourth of all such vic-timizations nationwide (Snyder and Sick-mund, 1999). Geographic areas can be differentiated notonly by the rate at which juveniles are thevictims of homicide but also by the per-centage of all Homicides in the area thatinvolve a juvenile victim (see figure 3).Thus, in some States with a low rate ofjuvenile victim Homicides , such as NewHampshire and some other New EnglandStates, juveniles actually constitute anabove-average percentage (more than20 percent) of all homicide victims in theState.

8 However, in other low-rate States,such as West Virginia, juveniles representless than 10 percent of all homicide vic-tims. The grim combination of a high rateof juvenile victim Homicides and a highcauses of childhood mortality, accountingfor 1 out of 23 deaths of Children and youthyounger than 18 ( Census Bureau,1998). More Children 0 4 years of age inthe United States now die from homicidethan from infectious diseases or cancer,and homicide claims the lives of moreteenagers in the United States than anycause other than accidents ( CensusBureau, 1998).

9 Since 1993, however, homi-cides of juveniles have joined the down-ward trend in Homicides of adults thatbegan in 1991 (figure 1).Juvenile homicide is one of the most un-evenly distributed forms of child victim-ization. Certain groups and localities ex-perience the overwhelming brunt of theproblem. Minority Children and Youth are dispropor-tionately affected. For example, 52 percentof juvenile victims of homicide are non-white (Snyder and Finnegan, 1998). Evenafter a recent decline, the overall rate ofvictimization for black juveniles ( per100,000) in 1997 dwarfed the rate for whitejuveniles ( per 100,000) (figure 2).

10 Thevictimization rate for Hispanic juveniles inthree States where data are available wasalso quite high in 1997 ( per 100,000).3 The uneven distribution is also States have no juvenile Homicides ,and some have rates that are twice thenational average (table 1). Homicides ofjuveniles are much more common in large(ages 6 to 11), and teenagers (ages 12to 17)2differ on a number of dimen-sions, suggesting that they should beanalyzed Homicides of young Children arecommitted by family members throughbeatings or suffocation.