David Monroe pulled a gun from his pocket, said “f— it,” and fired five shots at a boy he had never seen before. At age 15, he became a killer.
The midday shooting on a Stockton street in 1997, while heinous, was hardly uncommon when it happened. In the mid-1990s, a juvenile was slain, on average, almost every day in California. Arrests of youths for violent felonies averaged about 60 a day statewide.
As with the earlier rise in crime,
the reasons for the sharp drop aren’t well understood and research has yet to pinpoint the causes. California is not alone in experiencing the decline in youth crime, as rates have fallen across the country.
Such local policies or programs, however, don’t explain the near-universal drop. The numbers fell in every California county, in most states and even on a global scale, said Males of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. Arrests for low-level offenses like petty theft and truancy have decreased, as have arrests for serious and potentially life-altering crimes like kidnap and rape.
“I would be very suspicious of people who claim to know why,” Males said, adding that elected officials like to credit local policies for the decline. “Then the county next door did the opposite and that worked, too.”
