Youth violence, guns, and the illicit-drug industry.

• Author: Blumstein, Alfred
• Position: Guns and Violence Symposium

1. THE GROWING CONCERN OVER CRIME

   Crime has become an issue of increasing importance to the American public. A growing fear of crime seems to pervade the nation and contributes to crime being reported as the nation's "most serious problem."(1) This Article examines some empirical aspects of changing crime patterns in recent years and identifies the nature of these changes more precisely than is possible from a typical press report or political debate. This Article concludes that the predominant change in homicide is attributable to a dramatic growth in youth homicide beginning in the mid-1980s and attributes that growth to the recruitment of young people into illicit drug markets. Because those markets are illegal, the participants must arm themselves for self-protection, and the resulting "arms race" among young people results in a more frequent resorting to guns as a major escalation of the violence that has often characterized encounters among teenage males.

   1. CHANGING CRIME RATES

      If one were to ask the American people in 1994 how the crime problem has changed in recent years, most would respond that crime has been growing incessantly worse, especially violent crime. This view is reflected in the "single biggest problem" rating. However prevalent this view may be, it is unfounded. Most Americans would be suprised to see Figure 1a,(2) the graph of the most serious violent crimes, murder and robbery, and Figure lb, the graph of robbery and burglary,(3) over the twenty-two year period from 1972 to 1993.(4) These graphs present a picture of oscillation around a strikingly flat trend. The crime rates have generally remained within a fairly confined range of 200 to 250 per 100,000 population for robbery, and eight to ten per 100,000 for murder. Both the murder and the robbery rates peaked in about 1980, declined through the early 1980s, and then climbed again during the late 1980s with the intensification of the crack epidemic and the "war on drugs." Over this period, there is no statistically significant trend for murder, a slight upward trend for robbery (an annual increase of 3.0 robberies per 100,000, or 1.35% of the mean robbery rate over the twenty-two years), and a slight downward trend for burglary (an annual decrease of 10.4 burglaries per 100,000, or 0.77% of the mean burglary rate over twenty-two years).

      The oscillatory pattern for the two major bellwether violent crimes, murder and robbery, is quite similar. Both reached a peak in about 1980 as the baby boomers began to emerge from the high-crime ages, and began a downward trend through the early 1980s. That downward trend was anticipated because of demographic considerations,(5) and was expected to continue until the early 1990s. Unfortunately, however, that downward trend was interrupted and turned upward through the late 1980s, probably as a consequence of the drug epidemic. In more recent years, both rates dropped from 1991 to 1992, but then murder increased while robbery decreased from 1992 to 1993.

      The pattern for burglary tracked that for robbery rather closely until the late 1980s, when burglary did not turn up, but continued in a slow decline. If the crime rise in the late 1980s was driven by the growth in the drug market, and if the crimes of theft were strongly influenced by the need to get money to buy drugs, then the divergence might be explained as follows: a robbery is a quick and convenient way for a drug user not earning his money from selling drugs to get his drug money. In contrast, a burglar still has to dispose of his property, through a fence or otherwise, and users in urgent need of drugs may choose to avoid that complication.

   2. DEMOGRAPHIC-SPECIFIC RATES

      The aggregate rates reflect a combination of changes in the crime-committing propensity of particular demographic groups and changes in demographic composition, particularly groups with relatively high crime involvement. One can partition these factors by examining changes in demographic-specific rates. The three principal measured demographic variables -- age, race, and gender -- account, for large differences in the involvement in crime. The measure that accounts for the greatest difference is gender, but it is the least useful to explore because gender composition is not changing appreciably. Age, on the other hand, is one of the most important factors affecting crime rates and has been changing significantly in recent years. Therefore, it is useful to examine age-specific crime rates. This section also explores race, an important factor, especially in violent crime.

      1. Age

         Age is so fundamental a construct that its relationship to offenses is usually designated as the "age-crime curve." These graphs depict the ratio of the number of people of each age, a, who are arrested for crime type i, Ai(a), to the total population of that age,(6) Ni(a), as a function of age.

         1. Robbery and Burglary

            Figures 2a and 2b contrast the patterns for robbery (scaled up by a factor of three)(7) and burglary in 1985 and in 1992. First, note that both crimes peak fairly early at about age seventeen, and fall off rather quickly, reaching their half-peak points in the early twenties, about age twenty-one for burglary and about age twenty-four for robbery. This suggests that people start committing robbery a bit later than burglary and also finish somewhat later. But clearly careers in both tend to terminate at a relatively young age.

            The pattern for robbery and burglary for 1992 depicted in Figure 2b is very similar to the 1985 picture in Figure 2a. The burglary peak has dropped somewhat and the robbery peak has increased. This observation is consistent with the earlier observation about the aggregate rates in Figure lb and suggests that the change in the age-specific rates is a principal factor affecting the aggregate rates. Aside from that shift, however, the two patterns are very similar during the two periods.

            The information of these age-specific patterns is particularly relevant to the various proposals for life sentences without parole for people convicted of their third felony, popularly known as the "three strikes and you're out" law. The age-specific pattern information is especially relevant if the felonies characterized as "strikes" include robbery, which they often do since robbery is classified as a "violent" crime, or burglary because of the few burglars or robbers that appear at age fifty. "Careers" in these two property crimes are relatively short and have largely concluded by the time the offender reaches age fifty. But the life expectancy at age fifty, even in 1991, was still over twenty-five years,(8) especially with the good care a convicted criminal is likely to get in prison. Strikes should be limited to only serious violent offenses, which display longer criminal careers.(9) The long duration of the career and the seriousness of the offending patterns might more reasonably justify the lengthy imprisonment and its associated high cost, at least on incapacitation grounds.

         2. Murder

            The trends in the age-specific patterns for murder(10) are in marked contrast to those for robbery and burglary. Figure 3a presents two graphs of the shift in age-specific murder rates from 1965 to 1970. This figure displays a clear, across-the-board increase in the age-specific rates at all ages, but the pattern in the two years has not changed. In both cases, there is a rather flat peak over the ages of eighteen through twenty-four, with a relatively slow rise compared to Figures 2a and 2b for robbery and burglary until age eighteen, followed by a relatively slow decline after age twenty-four.

            Contrast this situation with Figure 3b, which depicts the same age-specific arrest rates for murder for the years 1986 and 1992. Here, there clearly has been a marked change from the fairly flat-peaked patterns of 1985 (which are very similar to the patterns for 1965 and 1970 of Figure 3a) to the sharp peak that appears at age eighteen and the surrounding ages in 1992.

            A different view of these same age-specific arrest rates is presented in Figure 4a,(11) which depicts the time trends in the age-specific rates for the individual ages from eighteen through twenty-four, the ages around the peaks of the graphs in Figure 3. From 1965 to 1970 there is a general increase in murder arrest rates at all these ages. Second, the murder arrest rate for ages eighteen through twenty-four was virtually the same throughout the fifteen year period of 1970 through 1985; this reflects the relative flatness of the peak of the graphs for those years in Figure 3.

            Third, at age twenty-four there was no strong trend, certainly not an upward trend, and perhaps a slight downward trend, from 1970 through 1992. Figure 3 confirms that this stability is largely the case for all ages beyond twenty-four. Indeed, there may even have been a reduction of the rates for those older ages in 1992.

            Finally, there were large increases in...