The Rise and Fall of Gun-Related Youth Homicides

1. Throughout the period 1972 to 1996, the homicide rate oscillated within the range of 8 to 10 per 100,000 population, until it broke through this range in 1996 with a rate of only 7.4. There is a reasonable expectation that the data for 1997 will reveal a rate below 7.0.

See: Murder and Robbery Rates as a function of Time

2. Homicide rates per 100,000 population peak in the ages between 18 and 24. Those rates were flat from 1970 to 1985. But homicide rates for 18 year olds more than doubled between 1985 and 1993, and then dropped for the next three years.

See: Murder Rates as a Function of Age

3. An important factor in this peak of homicides was the arrival of crack as a product available to a larger market, primarily poor people who could not afford powder cocaine. That growth in demand recruited young men, primarily minorities, to be participants in the supply side of that market.

4. As they armed themselves to protect their wares against robbers, their peers with no involvement in those markets could well have sought out similar weaponry for their own protection against those carrying guns. This gave rise to a contagion process that saw widespread carrying and use of guns by young individuals without the maturity and wisdom to appreciate the harm being done. This resulted in an extraordinary peak, from 1987 to 1996, in youthful murders using handguns.

See: The Peak of Homicides by Handguns

The height of the murder-rate-peak increased as the age increased from age 13 to age 18. The height of that peak decreased with age above age 18.

See: Rise of the Murder-Rate-Peak with Age

See: Decease in Murder-Rate-Peak after Age 18

5. One strong suggestion is that the decline in homicides following the 1993 peak is that there were effective efforts to remove handguns from young people. To the extent that the general level of carrying guns was diminished, that reduced the incentive for others to carry guns, and so a reverse of the escalation process could have been set in motion.

Other Causes of the National Downturn in Crime After 1993

• In many cases, community groups provided mediation between battling gangs and took leadership in encouraging the de-escalation of the arms race in their neighborhoods.

• There were changes in the demand structure for crack that contributed to more orderly, and perhaps more surreptitious markets instead of the open street markets that characterized the 1980s. The demand by new younger users dried up as they saw the deleterious effects on their parents and older siblings. The domination of the market by the long-time users undoubtedly contributed to the stability as the transactions became more private and individualized.

• Improvements in the economy not only provided jobs to young people but also has been a source of improved hope for succeeding in the legitimate economy.

• There is little incapacitation or deterrence of drug offending accomplished by incarceration, largely because those who leave the market will be replaced by new recruits. Nevertheless, since those prisoners have some likelihood of committing homicide if they were on the outside, there should be some incapacitive effect on homicide.

More False Myths Erased

Official data, newly obtained by the Human Rights Watch, reveal that relatively few convicted drug offenders are violent criminals. First, almost 80% of the 10,047 men and women sentenced to prison for drug offenses in 1997 had never had any prior convictions for any violent felony.

77.5% had no prior convictions for any violent felony.

Second, it’s fundamental that if one is arrested, that does not necessarily mean that one is guilty of anything. Many, many people are found to be innocent. Even so, almost 50% of those sent to prison for drug offenses in 1997 never had even been arrested for any violent felony.

47.6% even had no prior arrests for any violent felony.

33.3% had no prior arrests for any drug felony.

The mandatory drug laws prey too much on the minnows, not the sharks. It’s high time these costly, extremely harsh, mandatory drug laws were erased. Let’s give back to judges their responsibility to judge fairly.

Big Drug Dealers?

60% were convicted of the three lowest felonies - Class C, D, or E, which require only minute drug amounts. For example, only a one-half gram of cocaine is required for conviction of Class D felony possession. 1,242 people are in prison for that class D offense.

60% of all the drug offenders are minor offenders.

Even those who had been previously convicted of a drug felony include only relatively few big dealers. 89% of those with prior drug convictions were convicted of only the lowest categories of drug crime (class C, D, or E).

89% of even the "repeat offenders" are small fry.

They’re small, street level sellers, easily picked up in "buy and bust" operations, addicted individuals supporting their habit through low-level trades, "mules," who carried drugs owned by someone else, and gullible girlfriends and wives of dealers.

The mandatory drug laws are mostly netting the little street-people in minority neighborhoods, and are relatively ineffective on the big guys. A RAND study concludes: "It is difficult to identify those (highest level) dealers solely by the quantity of drugs possessed. It might be easier to identify them if the criminal justice system could consider additional factors, e.g., evidence regarding a dealer’s position in the distribution hierarchy. Such factors, ignored by mandatory minimums, can be taken into account by judges working under discretionary sentencing."

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