Youth crime levels in California dropped to the lowest in recorded history last year, according to a new report from the San Francisco based think tank, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. In 2011, there were 3,483.1 arrests per 100,000 youth aged 10-17, the lowest since the state began keeping such statistics in 1954. That reality contrasts sharply with popular myths about the rising tide of youth violence, writes CJCJ researcher Mike Males, also author of the book Kids and Guns: How Politicians, Experts, and the Press Fabricate Fear of Youth. Particularly, the data dispel any notion that Black and Latino youth drive up crimes rates.
"In fact, the state’s largest, most diverse youth population has the lowest level of both major and minor offenses ever reliably tabulated," Males wrote in his report. In the 1950s, California's youth population was 80 percent non-Latino White. Today it's 73 percent non-White.
The crime low comes at other historic points for the state when it comes to juvenile justice. The state's juvenile prison system is the smallest it's been in more than a decade. And in general, incarceration levels have dropped. As of December 2011, an estimated 7,500 youth were in some sort of state or county lock-up on any given night, down from 11,000 in the mid-1990s. If not tougher policing or more time locked up, what explains California's dramatic drop in juvenile crime? Males cites two potential factors: changes in marijuana laws and socioeconomics.
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