Young Adult - Arrests for Property and Violent Crimes
Young Adult Arrests - Property Crimes - 16-21 years[view
data]
Young Adult Arrests - Violent Crimes - 16-21 years[view
data]
Data Provider:NYS Division of Criminal Justice Services
Life
Area: Civic Engagement
Definition:
Index crimes form the traditional quick view of crimes as established by the FBI more than 75 years ago. They are classified as the most serious offenses, and are the crimes referred to in newspaper headlines that accompany the annual release of national data, usually in terms of such as, 'crime is up' or 'crime dips by 5 percent.' Violent index crimes include murder, non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Property index crimes are burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft. A distinction is made between violent and property crimes because their arrest trends generally differ.
A young adult arrest is recorded in the jurisdiction where the arrest occurs (which may not be the jurisdiction that the crime occurred), and only the most serious offense that was committed during a crime incident or multiple crime incidents is counted.
Some people try to relate arrest numbers with crime numbers of the same type. The results can be very misleading, for the following reasons:
- many persons who commit crimes are never arrested;
- a single arrest can involve multiple crime incidents, such as when the arrest of a burglar reveals that he is responsible for a number of burglaries over a period of months; and
- more than one person can be arrested for the same crime incident, such as when one burglary is committed by a pair of people working as a team.
The young adult arrest rates are calculated by dividing the number of reported arrests for violent and property index crimes of young adults ages 16 through 21 years old by an estimate of the population of young people of the same age group in that county.
Significance:
Arrests of young adults ages 16 through 21 years are handled by the adult criminal court system in New York State.
Note:
Recent DCJS quality reviews have shown that arrest reporting for juveniles -- people under 16 years of age -- is not currently reliable in many jurisdictions due to widely differing local views of the definition of "juvenile arrest." Therefore, while DCJS is actively working with the more than 550 law enforcement agencies in New York State to improve data collection and reporting systems for juvenile data, the data provided in earlier KWIC editions have been replaced this year with young adult arrests.
The young adult arrest data are derived from the criminal history database, which contains fingerprintable arrest information concerning people age 16 years and over. These arrest cases are processed through the adult criminal system of prosecution, court, and corrections.
The presentation of these data signify a change from an arrest rate per 1,000 in earlier years to an arrest rate per 10,000 population. DWI arrests shown on another table are not included in Violent or Property Index arrests.
Findings:
Arrests of young adults ages 16 through 21 years for violent crimes dropped almost 11 percent in 2009 as compared with 2000. Arrests for property crimes rose 15 percent during this same time period. This resulted in a decrease in the proportion of arrests accounted for by violent crimes, from 39 percent in 2000 to 34 percent in 2009. The rate of violent crime arrests per 10,000 youth dropped from 108.5 in 2000 to 91.1 in 2009, while the property crime arrest rate rose from 165.6 to 179.5 during the same time period. The population of this age group increased by an estimated 6.3 percent between 2000 and 2009.
KWIC
Indicator(s) and Narrative For: