Media Exaggerates Youth Crime, Experts Say

by Lazar Bloch

Despite a spate of highly publicized killings -- including the shooting deaths of four children and one adult by two young boys in a Jonesboro, Arkansas, schoolyard last March -- one think tank specializing in criminal justice issues now says the number of murders committed in schools is actually declining.

The recent "trend" of murders in U.S. schools has been manufactured by the media, says a report released yesterday by the group, the Justice Policy Institute (JPI).

The number of "school related" shootings reached 40 during the 1997-98 academic year but, while highly publicized, actually represented a slight decline since 1992, the report said.

Gun-related deaths, however, claim the lives of about 3,000 children a year in the United States which makes this country the leader among 25 industrialized nations in total gun-related juvenile deaths, according to the JPI report.

However, the group adds, children are 23 times more likely to be killed by a gun accidentally, and three times more likely to be shot to death by an adult, than they are to be murdered in school by another student with a handgun.

"Schools are still the safest place in America for kids. If we want to reduce the number of childhood gun deaths, we should be expanding after-school programs and restricting gun sales," says Vincent Schiraldi, the director of JPI.

The high level of recent media attention on the school shootings has been accompanied by a surge in public interest on the topic, as a recent study by the Pew Research Center on reader interest in news topics shows.

According to the Pew survey, 46 percent of respondents say that they have followed the Jonesboro case "very closely" -- about the same percentage that followed the disaster at Chernobyl twelve years ago.

The media's representation, and the public's concern, have had a serious impact on policy, inspiring politicians to propose dramatic changes in the way children are treated..

In response to the school shootings, for example, Republican Gov. James Gilmore of Virginia has proposed cutting after-school programs, such as night-time athletics. "The shocking pattern of violence that is terrorizing our nation's schools must end," Gilmore said recently. "Students cannot learn, and teachers cannot educate, in an unsafe environment."

The JPI report criticizes his plan for putting kids on the street at the peak hours of street crime among juveniles, in the hours before parents return from work.

Such proposals undermine the "very structures children need most," says Elliot Curie, a criminologist and sociologist at the University of California at Berkeley. "The more effective measures (to end school violence) are going to have to include some of the supportive adult help for kids that we have taken away from them in the past 10 to 15 years."

President Bill Clinton has also targeted school shootings as a major issue in recent months, and has suggested the imposition of school uniforms, daytime curfews, and increased police surveillance in schools -- policies which JPI finds absurd.

"Taking the police off the streets and putting them in schools is an enormous waste of public resources. The schools are the safest place for kids to be," says Jason Ziedenberg, a JPI researcher.

Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah is pushing a bill which could force juveniles to be incarcerated with adult offenders. "If we don't pass a juvenile crime bill, the country's going to see more and more of these (shootings)," says Hatch.

The JPI report challenges the effectiveness of Hatch's plan, noting that juveniles who are mixed in with the adult population have a higher rate of returning to criminal activity, and are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted.

Critics say proposals like Pitts' and Hatch's, demonise youths and overlook their potential contributions. "(Children) have an important role to play in developing communities that are conducive to their own growth and development," says Linda Bowen, executive director of the National Funding Collaborative on Violence Prevention.

Gun control advocates also are taking the opportunity provided by the media frenzy to push their causes into the spotlight. Senators Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, and John Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican, have introduced a bill would impose criminal penalties on adults who failed to safeguard guns which are used by children in a crime.

Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein of California supports a bill which would ban the sales of ammunition clips with more than 10 rounds.

These senators are counting on the high-profile school shootings to give their bills the extra political fuel they will need to get through a Republican-led Congress which is normally wary of gun- control legislation.

Clinton has also advocated stronger gun control in the wake of the shootings, issuing an executive order which prohibits the sale of 58 makes of assault-style weapons.

Ziedenberg says he hopes the JPI report will "calm people down and head off some of the policy responses which are being made in an environment of moral panic."