ABSTRACT
The United States experienced a dramatic increase in youth violence beginning in the late 1980s. Between 1987 and 1994, arrests of youth for violent offenses increased by 71 percent (Snyder, 1997). The homicide arrest rate for juveniles more than doubled over the same period, rising from 6.9 arrests per 100,000 youth in 1987 to a peak of 14.5 arrests per 100,000 youth in 1993 (Snyder, 1998a). Although there have been significant decreases in juvenile arrests for violent offenses every year since 1994, the rate for 1998 was still 15 percent above the rate for 1989 (Snyder, 1999).
