From The Sentencing Project:
Executive Summary
Reducing gun violence should be an urgent priority in the United States. However, imposing harsh consequences for all adolescent gun possession cases harms urban youth of color disproportionately without benefits for community safety. Other approaches to reducing gun violence are far more equitable and effective.
Surveys find that roughly 5% of youth in the United States ages 12 to 17 – more than a million young people – carry a firearm each year.1 This high rate of gun possession is not new. Despite a significant uptick in gun sales during the pandemic, the share of U.S. youth who carry guns has held steady in recent years.2
Yet, amid a wave of alarming news coverage about youth violence3 and a sizeable uptick in gun violence against youth since 2012,4 youth arrests5 and court referrals6 for weapons possession – cases in which carrying a weapon, not brandishing it or using it to commit other crimes, is the most serious charge facing a young person – have been rising sharply since the start of the pandemic. A disproportionate and growing share of these cases involve Black youth,7 even though rates at which youth carry guns do not vary widely by race.8 Justice system responses for youth referred to court on weapons possession charges have grown increasingly punitive over the past decade, especially for black youth.9
Unlike gun possession, which is widespread in all areas of the country, actual gun violence is highly concentrated geographically,10 and it is committed primarily by a very narrow segment of the youth and young adult population.11 Most youth who carry weapons do not use them to threaten others or to commit crimes. Rather than keeping us safer, aggressive law enforcement and inflexible and punitive court responses to youth gun possession are likely to worsen gun violence and other crime by youth. Meanwhile, inflexible punitive responses to adolescent gun possession damage young people’s futures, and they exacerbate the justice system’s already glaring racial disparities.
The most promising approaches to reduce gun violence involve comprehensive initiatives in which courts work with community partners to address the reasons why youth and young adults obtain guns, and whole communities mobilize to engage and intervene with youth and young adults who are at maximum risk for gun violence.12
Read the full report here.
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