Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 19, 1995 TAG: 9503170002
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
The current homicide epidemic is concentrated among teen-agers, researchers said Friday at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
While murder among teen-agers has doubled in the past decade, the homicide rate among other age groups has remained steady or declined, scientists said.
``We've really been lucky that this outbreak of teen-aged homicide came at a time when the country's teen population was declining,'' said James Alan Fox, dean of the college of criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston. ``But that's ending now. We're entering a period of growth among teens.
``There are 40 million children in this country under the age of 10. They're growing up young and restless. I'm not optimistic. We'll see a bloodbath in the next 10 years.''
Several researchers agreed that guns and drugs are the major reasons for the increase in teen homicide.
The spread of crack cocaine saw intense recruitment among juveniles by the drug industry, which supplied its workers with guns, said Alfred Blumstein, a public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Guns spread from drug workers to friends and then to other youths, Blumstein said. The trend has spread and has spawned a 120 percent increase in murder arrests among black juveniles and an 80 percent increase among whites, he said.
``This increase in the homicide rate among juveniles provides greater incentives for other youngsters to carry guns,'' Blumstein said. ``Teen fights are now turning into shootouts.''
Apart from the teen-age homicide epidemic, things are fairly normal, said Douglas Lee Eckberg, a sociologist at Winthrop University in South Carolina. ``Among adults, the homicide rate in the 1990s is very similar to what it was in the 1980s and in the 1970s,'' he said.
``Although data are incomplete, the current homicide rate among adults is likely also very much like it was in the 1920s and 1930s. What the likely case is here is that the homicide rate in the 1940s and '50s were relatively low.''
by CNB