Cities scramble to try to address surge in violent crime involving kids and teens

Cities across the country are still struggling to overcome a surge in juvenile crime that has included waves of increased carjackings and thefts, gun-related offenses and violence in some areas….

The troubling pattern for America’s youth started during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, when many schools were shut down as the nation tried to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.

Most of the younger kids that are committing these things are doing it because they were isolated and kind of stuck in their homes for a year or if not more, and they like kind of forgot what’s socially acceptable to an extent,” said Jillian Snider, an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former NYPD police officer.

Some areas have seen signs of success lowering crime rates by offering after-school activities or getting kids involved in community-based programs to provide role models and more productive ways for children to spend their time.

It could have been something as simple as that kid didn’t have anywhere to go after school,” said Snider, who is studying juvenile deflection methods as policy director at the R Institute, a D.C.-based think tank. “Now they have this rec center or whatever it is, so a lot of the juvenile-related crime that we’re seeing is simply a lack of services geared towards juveniles to keep them from falling into these bad ways…”

“I don’t think locking up all the bad kids is going to solve the problem because guess what, locking up all the adults in the ‘70s and ‘80s didn’t solve all the world’s problems either,” Snider said. “It caused 2.2 million people to be locked up and it didn’t stop crime.”