MONDAY, June 6, 2005 (HealthDay News) -- A new study has revealed a grim fact of life: Children who spend time in juvenile hall are four times as likely as other kids to die violently before they reach their late 20s.
Female juvenile offenders are at highest risk, facing nearly an eight-fold increase in the odds that they'll die an unnatural death.
In total, 65 of 1,829 youths from Chicago who were tracked for eight years by researchers had died by March 2004. All had served time in juvenile hall between 1995 and 1998, when they were between 10 and 18 years old.
"The ironic thing is that these kids are at great risk for physical diseases like diabetes and asthma, but nobody died from physical disease. Everyone died awful, violent deaths -- run over by gang members, stabbed by a boyfriend," said Linda Teplin, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University. She is co-author of the study, published in the June issue of Pediatrics.
The study is part of a $15 million project examining the health of young criminals. According to Teplin, researchers didn't initially plan to publish a study looking into death rates, but changed their minds once they noticed how many of the young people were dying.
More than half of the 1,829 children randomly picked from the juvenile hall rolls were black, and 28 percent were Hispanic. Just 16 percent were white. The researchers compared their death rates to a similar group of children from the Chicago area.
Nearly all of the deaths came as a result of gunfire. Only a handful of the deaths were the result of other violent causes such as suicide and car accidents.
Girls appeared to be at especially high risk of violent death. "Most were abused as kids sexually and physically, and they've run away," Teplin said. "When they're on the street they have to figure out some way to support themselves, and some become prostitutes. These are very dangerous activities fraught with risk."
According to the researchers, the 65 deaths as of March 2004 -- which have now reached 71 -- outnumber the 52 deaths in nationwide school shootings from 1990-2000. "Yet Congress appointed a panel to study the problem of mass school shootings," Teplin said. "We somehow care much less about urban violence, especially when it involves minority kids."
While the findings aren't surprising, they do point to the importance of reaching out to troubled children, said Daniel W. Webster, an associate professor at the Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"There are successful prevention models out there, many of which are very cost-effective," he said. "You prevent not only the criminal acts, but you also could in essence be doing a lifesaving kind of work, not to mention the positive impact it has on the communities."
The study authors agree, pointing to a number of possible solutions, including improved mental health services, better delinquency prevention programs, and less poverty and segregation.
More information
Learn more about the numbers behind juvenile crime from the Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention.
