Data shows juvenile crime is down. Why do police and prosecutors say it's getting worse?

In less than 48 hours in January, two groups of teenagers attacked two pedestrians in downtown Cincinnati, punching and kicking the victims until they crumpled to the concrete, dazed and bleeding.

Videos of the attacks , captured by surveillance cameras, went viral within days. As thousands watched and re-watched the violence, the videos became part of a narrative about Cincinnati that would be repeated for months by the police union, prosecutors and others.

Juvenile crime, they said, was out of control.

But an Enquirer analysis of police and Hamilton County Juvenile Court records tells a different, more complicated story.

Arrests of juveniles for violent crimes, such as homicide, assault and rape, were 37% lower in the first five months of this year compared to last year, The Enquirer found, and were 21% lower than the average for those months over the past decade.

Arrests this year for less serious crimes, such as thefts and vandalism, showed a similar decline compared to both last year and the past decade.

Debate over juvenile crime goes public

Yet the perception persists that juvenile crime in Cincinnati is getting worse. One reason is likely the still-fresh memory of last year, when shootings involving juveniles soared and arrests climbed higher than at any point since 2017.

Another, though, is connected to a long-simmering and increasingly public debate over how best to reduce juvenile crime.

On one side of that debate is the police union and prosecutors, who say they want tougher penalties and more transparency in juvenile court proceedings. On the other are juvenile court officials and children’s advocates, who say they want to protect the public while giving kids a chance to change their lives for the better.

Those differences spilled into public view after the videos of the downtown attacks began circulating in January.

Cincinnati’s police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, shared one of the videos on social media and later sent out a press release urging city residents to “demand accountability from elected judges – before the violence spirals further out of control.”

That came months after Hamilton County Prosecutor Melissa Powers, a former juvenile court judge, complained on Facebook about Juvenile Judge Kari Bloom’s handling of teenagers who beat a high school student in Washington Park so severely he suffered a traumatic brain injury. Powers' post appeared under the banner "JUVENILE COURT WATCH" as part of a series of posts criticizing the court.

Powers, a Republican who is running for reelection in November, noted that Bloom, a Democrat, refused to allow video of the attack to be shown in court and sentenced one of the attackers, who is 14, to probation.

“This is exactly why juveniles are out of control,” FOP President Ken Kober wrote on Facebook, in response to Powers’ post.

Bloom, through a court spokeswoman, declined to comment. Judicial ethics rules restrict judges from making statements that could affect cases that may come before them or be appealed. Liz Igoe, court administrator for juvenile court, said the 14-year-old who got probation is under supervision and must stay out of trouble or risk being locked up until his 21st birthday.

Igoe noted that the 14-year-old was the only person charged in the attack, even though several others participated, which meant most of those involved never even got to juvenile court. "The court can only address conduct when charges are filed and prosecuted successfully," she said.

The disagreement over the Washington Park case is just one example of the widening divide between the court and law enforcement. The relationship now is to the point where the two sides can't agree on the meaning of the latest juvenile crime statistics.

The debate in some ways mirrors an ongoing national political argument , in which Republicans complain that violence is soaring under Democratic leadership, even though FBI statistics show violent crime has fallen significantly over the past year or more.

In an interview , Kober said the improvement in crime numbers locally doesn't change his view that the juvenile court isn't doing enough.

“They’re not holding kids accountable,” he said.

Igoe said the statistics show that what the court is doing now – through detention, probation and community partnerships – is working.

"There are many ways to hold kids accountable," she said.

Disagreement over what the crime statistics mean

Few in the legal system or in law enforcement would dispute that juveniles are committing too many violent crimes, or that guns are too often turning up in the hands of kids.

But juvenile crime, like adult crime, ebbs and flows. Sometimes it’s possible to pinpoint why – the emergence or demise of a violent gang, for example – and sometimes there’s no obvious explanation.

The Enquirer’s analysis found more juveniles were arrested for violent crimes early in the decade than in recent years. From 2014 to 2017, an average of 118 juveniles were charged with violent crimes every year.

From 2020 to 2023, the annual average was 75.

Those numbers only reflect arrests in Cincinnati, not the entire county, but the city has for decades been home to the vast majority of violent juvenile crimes. The decline over the past decade suggests the city is not in the grips of a juvenile crime wave.

Kober, though, said those numbers might be deceiving. Not every crime is solved, he said, so arrests don’t always reflect the number or severity of crimes. “These kids are certainly much more violent than they were 10 years ago,” Kober said. “That’s the alarming trend.”

He said the arrest statistics also don’t show the full impact of violent crime because some streets and neighborhoods suffer more than others. That’s true this year in Avondale, where shootings and homicides are higher even though they’re lower citywide.

Kober said Bloom and the other juvenile court judge, Republican Stacey DeGraffenreid, should send more juveniles to Hamilton County’s Youth Center, known to most as “2020” because of its address at 2020 Auburn Ave.

Kids no longer fear arrest, Kober said, because they believe juvenile court is “a revolving door.”

In a written response to questions from The Enquirer, Powers echoed that sentiment. "Lack of consequences for delinquent behavior remains a daily problem in juvenile court," she said. "There is minimal fear among juveniles that they will be held in custody for any reason."

But the Youth Center, which houses between 80 and 90 juveniles daily, isn’t designed to be a long-term residence, even for kids accused of committing violent crime. It typically holds kids while their cases are pending. Juvenile court judges must decide whether to send those kids to one of Ohio’s youth prisons , to adult court to face more serious charges, or to some form of probation.

Other options, such as lower-security facilities that offer drug or mental health treatment, are limited because there are so few of them.

An Enquirer analysis of juvenile court data found that penalties imposed by the current juvenile court judges are comparable to those imposed over the past decade, including when Powers was a juvenile court judge.

During Powers’ six years as a judge, from 2017 to 2022, which includes the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the court sent an average of 37 juveniles per year to an Ohio youth prison. Last year, under Bloom and DeGraffenreid, the court sent 32.

'We can't ignore this evidence any longer'

Igoe, the juvenile court’s administrator, said juvenile judges everywhere are looking for alternatives to locking up young offenders for long periods. There are fewer places to put them – Ohio has closed five youth prisons since 2007 – and there’s a growing body of research that suggests incarceration makes matters worse both for society and for the kids sent to prison.

A report last year from The Sentencing Project , a nonprofit that supports prison reform, found more than 70% of young offenders who spent time in a youth prison or jail were arrested again within three years of their release. Igoe said that when Bloom's administration took over in January 2023, they inherited a system where 82% of children of color appearing before the court committed additional crimes in the community within one year of the court intervening.

In response to findings like those, along with the rising cost of incarceration, state and local officials began moving away from detention, particularly for nonviolent offenders. Nationwide, the one-day count of young people in custody has fallen from more than 100,000 to about 25,000 since 1999, according to The Sentencing Project.

“We were doing more harm than good for these kids,” said Igoe, who has been with Hamilton County’s juvenile court since the 1990s.

The change in approach began long before Hamilton County’s current juvenile court judges arrived.

Hamilton County’s court, like others across the state, drew inspiration from the Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative, a plan devised by state officials and agencies in hopes of lowering incarceration rates.

The goal was to steer juvenile offenders to programs and probation , rather than to jail or prison. Hamilton County Juvenile Court formally adopted the plan in 2020, when Powers was the court’s chief judge.

“Some folks might not be happy with the shift that’s happening, but it’s happening because we can’t ignore this evidence any longer,” said Leah Winsberg, director the Children’s Law Center, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the rights of young people.

“If we want to reduce crime and make communities safer and decrease recidivism, then we have to do what the evidence tells us works.”

Are kids' charges disappearing on a 'shadow docket'?

Kober and Powers, however, say juvenile court needs to work more closely with police and prosecutors to protect public safety.

They are most concerned about the court’s “diversionary docket,” also known as the “unofficial” or “shadow” docket.

The docket is intended to give juveniles an opportunity to deal with a criminal charge without getting a permanent criminal record, which can hurt their chances of getting jobs or going to college. To qualify, a juvenile must be a first-time offender and the crime must be minor.

Kids whose cases go on the diversionary docket typically are put on probation and ordered to do community service. If they successfully complete the sentence, the record of their crime is expunged.

Kober and others have complained that juvenile court judges are abusing their discretion with the docket by sending it cases that don’t belong there, even if victims object. Kober recently joined forces with Republican state Rep. Cindy Abrams in calling for the docket to be more transparent to allow more input from police and prosecutors.

“A judge can divert a case against the victim’s wishes,” Kober said. “Is that victim getting justice?”

Powers said the juvenile court statistics may be unreliable because diverted cases don't show up in the data. If there's no agreement on how crimes are counted, she said, it's difficult to talk about reducing those crimes.

"The lack of accountability makes us all less safe," Powers said.

Specifically, Powers and Kober have accused the court of using the diversionary docket to ignore juvenile runaway cases, assault cases and resisting arrest cases. It's difficult to confirm whether or how often that's happening because cases on the diversionary docket are difficult to track.

Runaway cases, however, aren’t considered violent offenses. And juvenile court data shows that of 103 resisting arrest cases last year, all but 18 stayed on the court’s regular docket.

Prosecutors dropped 24 resisting arrest cases on their own – more than were moved to the diversionary docket.

The system is working as it should, said Angela Chang, director of the youth defense division at the Hamilton County Public Defender’s office. She said the diversionary docket, along with the move toward less incarceration, is meant to keep kids from offending again, which is good not only for the kids, but for the rest of society.

“I know right now the call is for more detention,” Chang said. “But we know through lots and lots of decades of research that every day a young person spends in detention, it increases their likelihood for recidivism.”

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Data shows juvenile crime is down. Why do police and prosecutors say it's getting worse?