Juvenile crimes overreported

Juvenile Crimes Overreported

Juvenile crimes are vastly overreported by the media, reports the Building Blocks for Youth. Off Balance: Youth, Race, Crime in the News, a study that compiled dozens of survey results and research findings, found that although youth crime is at its "lowest ebb

During the 1998-1999 school year, the likelihood of a high school student being killed in school was one in 2 million. However, 71 percent of Americans thought a school shooting was likely to happen in their community.

Youth minority news coverage showed the greatest amount of distortion. "What white Americans know of black youth crime, they know about ... almost entirely from the media, in which it is seriously overrepresented," says Vincent Schiraldi, president of the Justice Policy Institute and co-author of the report. "The most profound finding is not just that media coverage is going up while crime is going down, not that African-American and Hispanic youths are overdepicted as criminals and are underpredicted as victims, but that it's all three at once. It's a misinformation synergy."

The study also found that television coverage of murders increased 473 percent from 1990 to 1998 and during that period, the homicide rate dropped 32 percent.