"Out Of Control" On Juvenile Crime
This morning on CNN, Soledad O'Brien talked to attorney Ivan Golde about the arrest of a 16-year-old boy in the murder of Pamela Vitale, the 52-year-old wife of a well known defense attorney named Daniel Horowitz. Golde, a friend and co-counsel of Horowitz, has been making the rounds on the television networks (including CBS) to discuss the case. Earlier in the week on CNN, he had identified another person, not the 16-year-old boy, as the possible killer.
This morning, however, he told O'Brien he wasn't surprised that the 16-year-old boy had been arrested. "The juvenile crime, the juvenile violent crime, is out of control," he said. "I'm not surprised this was a young kid."
Later, he added this:
It's got to stop. Where is it going to stop? When are these kids going to stop committing these serious, violent crimes? It's horrendous. As a society, we must do something about this. This hurts. This is painful.
Golde, who did not say anything along these lines on CBS, provided no evidence to support his point. But here are some facts: On Monday, the FBI released statistics showing that the U.S. violent crime rate decline 2.2 percent last year. Crime is now at a 30 year low. The numbers for juveniles are a little bit hard to parse, but in 2004, persons under 18 were responsible for 4.7 percent of murder and non-negligent manslaughter. In 2003, juveniles were responsible for 5.0 percent of murders, according to FBI data. These numbers do not suggest a growing epidemic of superpredators, to borrow a word popular with the media in the 1990s.
This isn't to say that juvenile crime isn't a problem. But Golde's assertion that "juvenile violent crime is out of control" – which he offers no evidence to back up, other than Vitale's murder – is fearmongering. It's akin to saying that "clowns are out of control" based primarily on the fact that one clown committed a murder.
We've all seen this kind of thing before, of course. Facts often get lost in the media maelstrom, buried in favor of the sweeping, unsupported generalizations. Thinking of CNN's airing of Wilde's comments, it's hard not to be reminded of Steven Colbert's satiric statement from "The Colbert Report" on Monday: "Like any good newsman, I believe that if you're not scared, I'm not doing my job."