During my presentation last week, I focused on the violent crimes that juveniles commit and how the percentages of offenses have changed over the last fifteen to twenty years. Some of my focus for this presentation dealt with violence within schools- the alarming rates of student on student violence, as well as student on faculty/staff violence. I also provided many arrest statistics for juveniles who committed violent crimes. Statistics that compared juvenile trends to adult trends and statistics comparing black and white children were also an aspect of the presentation. The final part of the project looked at what some states have done to combat juvenile violence and also how they are treating youths that are arrested for such offenses.
             The most important thing to understand is what crimes fall under the category of violent offenses. The are four components are 1) murders and nonnegligent manslaughter, 2) forcible rape, 3) aggravated assault, and 4) robbery. While I was doing the research for this, I found it difficult to find statistics for rape, assault, and robbery for juveniles. So much of my focus was on the homicide rates for youths. But during the last week I found some new numbers that reflect the trends of the other three.
             Robbery Rates- Declined 27% between 1981 and 1988
             Increased 70% between 1988 and 1994
             Fell substantially (33%) from 1995 to 1997
             Rape Rates- The arrest rate has remained steady from 1981 and 1997.
             The high rate was 23 arrests/100,000 juveniles
             The low was 16 per 100,000 juveniles
             Aggravated Assault Rates- Declined 16% from 1994 to 1997
             This level equals what it was in 1991(250 arrests/100,000 juveniles)
             Now, I will proceed onto the first topic of my presentation, violence within the walls of school. In 1996, students age 12-18 were victims of 255,000 incidents of nonfatal violent crimes. That same year, 10% of all public scho...