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Wisconsin / Juvenile crimes are down over decade
Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 03/23/2008 10:46:01 PM CDT
Juvenile arrests in Wisconsin appear to have dropped significantly from 1997 through 2006, according to a Wisconsin State Journal review.
Murder arrests showed the largest percentage drop, falling 71 percent from 78 arrests in 1997 to 23 in 2006, according to the newspaper.
Wisconsin's more than 350 police jurisdictions are required to report their arrests annually using guidelines set by the FBI.
For those 17 and younger, three categories of arrests are tabulated and reported by the state Office of Justice Assistance: index arrests, for serious offenses such as murder and rape; non-index arrests, for less-serious offenses; and status violations (a subset of non-index arrests), for things such as curfew violations and runaways.
Each category showed decreases from 1997 to 2006 — the most recent year for which data are available — as did all but two of 16 specific types of crime tracked by the Office of Justice Assistance over time.
Index crimes fell nearly 41 percent (29,554 to 17,490), non-index fell 20 percent (115,446 to 92,328) and status fell nearly 37 percent (36,310 to 23,053). The only two offenses tracked in which there were increases were drug offenses (4,936 to 5,088) and drunken driving (543 to 786).
The drop in juvenile arrests in Wisconsin mirrors a drop in crime nationally starting in the mid-1990s, according to Ken Streit, who studies juvenile crime issues as a clinical associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School.
What's behind that broader trend is a matter researchers still can't decide on.