ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on youth violence specifically, it is necessary to rely on data for which the age of the offender is known; in other words, arrest data. Relying upon Uniform Crime Reports arrest data places several limitations on our ability to understand youth violence. In fact, in the mid-1990s, at the height of concern about youth violence, several social commentators warned of an emerging class of youthful offenders—“superpredators”—who would create an epidemic of youth violence. Commensurate with the increase in youth violence in the late 1980s and early 1990s was the growing presence of youth gangs. Youth gangs captured the interest of criminologists, law enforcement, and the public in general during the 1950s and early 1960s as is evidenced by the wide popularity of the movie West Side Story. Law enforcement statistics provide information about the nature and extent of youth gangs and associated violence for both local and national settings.
