In fact, juvenile arson is the fastest growing crime in the United States. One out of every 15 people arrested for arson is under age 10, and one out of every three is under age 15. FBI statistics for 1995 show that juveniles account for more than 52 percent of arson arrests in the United States, which has more arsons than any other country in the world.
Some theorists believe juvenile arson is on the rise because open fires are on the decrease.
They propose that warm flames are instinctive to us and we are genetically prone to enjoy fires, as our ancestors did when fires were the difference between life and death. Lighting a match to newspapers is a thing of the past, as is feeding a fire, or laying it to bed at night. And in most areas, no leaf or trash burning is permitted. As a society, we simply no longer have any legitimate reasons to play with fire. This leads behaviorists to believe that juvenile arson may be connected genetically to the thousands of years we needed fire.