When they walk out of the house, these children are befriended by other juveniles who champion aggression and commit serious personal crimes. Juveniles tend to begin with truancy and crimes against property, such as vandalism, but can quickly move to more serious and violent crimes such as assault, robbery, and murder. The statistics are frightening. On a typical day in 1997, nearly 106,000 juveniles were being held in a residential facility as a result of a law violation. According to the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, an estimated 123,400 juveniles were arrested in 1997 for such violent crimes as murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
Juvenile violence is a tangible problem that affects every community.
In an ongoing study of the rate of juvenile crime in Winston-Salem, a team of researchers has learned of children as young as age 6 who have been arrested more than once for weapons violations. Another child had committed two forcible rapes by the time he was 9 or 10. Other kids that age have committed assault and robbery. Other agencies also received grants for the study and reduction of juvenile crime. Of those 144, about 40 juveniles accounted for 188 of the arrests.