Based on data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, this fact sheet presents data on violent crimes cleared (or solved) by the arrest of a juvenile in various years of UCR reporting in the latter years of the 1900s.
In the UCR, a crime is classified as cleared when at least one person is arrested, charged with the commission of the crime, and sent to a court for prosecution. In 1992, law enforcement agencies reported clearing 65 percent of reported murders, 56 percent of aggravated assaults, 52 percent of forcible rapes, and 24 percent of robberies. Combined, these four offenses form the FBI’s Violent Crime Index, the most widely used indicator of violent crime in the United States. Using this indicator, violent crimes were cleared by arrests at a rate of 45 percent. Although there is no information on who committed the crimes that were not cleared, this report assumes that the offender profile of cleared crimes approximates the offender profile of all crimes reported. This facilitates the calculation of the proportion of crimes committed by juveniles (persons under 18 years old). In 1992, 12.8 percent of all violent crimes cleared involved the arrest of a juvenile. Juvenile violent crime declined between the late 1960s and the late 1980s. Juvenile violent crime reached its lowest level in 25 years in 1987 when only 8.5 percent of violent crimes were committed by juveniles; however, since then, juvenile violent crime has increased to the levels in the mid-1970s. Trends are reported separately for juvenile commissions of murder, forcible rape, and robbery,