How a 'horrible perfect storm' fueled a 65% increase in homicides committed by kids

As students across the country returned to classrooms this fall, four Las Vegas teenagers returned to a court room to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter for beating their classmate to death in a violent attack that was captured on video and shared on online.

Days later, police in Maryland said a 16-year-old who had been the "victim, witness or suspect" in 10 previous incidents shot and killed his classmate in the bathroom on his first day at school.

The following week, a Florida teen was charged with murder for stabbing his mother in what officials called a "cold-blooded murder” less than two years after he was arrested, but never charged, for fatally shooting his father in Oklahoma.

Though murder and violent crime in the United States has decreased in recent years, homicides committed by children have risen dramatically, jumping 65% − from 315 in 2016 to 521 in 2022, according to a report in September from the Council on Criminal Justice.

Mass killings by the shockingly young triggered national attention and scrutiny in recent months, like 14-year-old student charged in a massacre at his rural Georgia high school last month, but the spike in homicides by young people is largely driven by more routine attacks.

Experts say an influx of firearms combined with residual effects from the COVID-19 pandemic and threats on social media may be to blame.

During the pandemic, Americans bought tens of millions of guns , which may be easier to access than parents realize. Children lost access to key social supports and violence prevention programs that can help reduce crime. And they spent more time online , where experts say threats and taunts can escalate into deadly conflict.

“The important issue here is any one of these things in isolation doesn't have the impact,” said David Muhammad, executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. “But the combination of this horrible perfect storm of challenges all culminated to produce this overall increase in gun violence.”

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Kids and guns and more gun-related crimes

The number of crimes committed by children under 18 involving firearms and the number of people seriously injured in such crimes has increased by more than 20%, according to the Council on Criminal Justice report, which is drawn from data submitted by 3,484 of the country’s more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies to the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System.

The increase in gun-related crime is notable, given that juvenile crime overall is down, including property crimes like burglary, larceny and robbery, which saw the steepest declines from 2016 to 2022, according to the council report.

Gun sales have been steadily increasing over the past two decades, peaking at more than 21 million in 2020, according to The Trace , a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that tracks gun violence. A report from the Education Department found the rate of student firearm possession in the 2021-2022 school year was higher than any other year in the previous decade.

"Youth access to firearms really just mirrors national access," said Muhammad, former chief probation officer for Alameda County in California.

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The amount and types of guns used by juvenile offenders also could be contributing to a higher victim count and more serious injuries, Muhammad said. He pointed to a recent mass shooting in Birmingham , Alabama, where a group of unidentified suspects opened fire with weapons modified with devices that can convert semiautomatic guns into automatic weapons, killing four and injuring 17 in a hail of bullets.

Brendan Lantz, co-author of the Council on Criminal Justice report, said guns can quickly turn lesser crimes deadly, and having millions more of any kind could help explain the increase in juvenile homicides.

“Anytime we have an increased presence of firearms in a violent altercation or assault, we’re increasing the risk of a severely violent outcome,” said Lantz, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University.

'I'll never be the same.' Why do kids kill?

Kahlonii Williams has been wondering what could have driven a child to kill since a 15-year-old boy was charged with felony first-degree murder in the shooting of her cousin Octavia Redmond. Redmond, 48, a Chicago postal worker, was shot July 19 on her route in the city's West Pullman neighborhood.

Redmond's husband, Demetrius Redmond, remembers her as a "sweet, kind, caring, giving" woman who loved to re-create recipes she saw on cooking shows.

"She shouldn't have went through this," he said. "I ain't been the same since and I'll never be the same again. Octavia was my whole world."

A motive in the killing was not given by police. Williams said she has lost a loved one to gun violence before, but the perpetrator wasn't as young as the suspect in her cousin's killing. She said news of the arrest left her "in disbelief that a 15-year-old could do this."

"The question is, why? We need to know why," she said.

The reasons children kill are unique to each situation. Their motives can be similar to those of adults, but the decision-making portions of adolescent brains are still forming , which can make kids more hasty to use violence to solve petty conflicts, said Kathleen Heide, professor emerita of criminology at the University of South Florida.

"When you have a juvenile who is angry, jealous, upset, terrified, they're much more likely to react than an adult," said Heide, author of "Young Killers: The Challenge of Juvenile Homicide."

These disputes sometimes originate online, where Muhammad said kids increasingly go to make threats and display weapons as a sort of status symbol. "Kidfluencers" as young as 9 can be seen showing off AR-15s and other firearms to social media followers. Research has found there are many reasons why kids post photos of guns , including among gang-affiliated young people , but online activity can sometimes fuel real-world violence .

And when schools shut down during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many children lost access to crucial support systems including violence intervention programs that may help them make better choices, Muhammad said.

Nowhere near juvenile violent crime peak of 1990s

Even as kids are committing more murders, the numbers are nowhere near the 1990s, when thousands of children 17 and younger were charged with murder, according to a report by researcher Charles Puzzanchera published by the Department of Justice . Those numbers fell sharply around the turn of the century, and by 2020, just 930 young people were arrested in murder cases, according to that report.

Though there's no question these arrests have been on the rise, they involve a small portion of the total youth population, Puzzanchera said.

"We are nowhere near the period of the '90s that generated a lot of the crime legislation for kids that we're still sort of undoing," he said.

Muhammad also stressed that it’s important to remember the vast majority of homicides are committed by and against adults.

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What more can be done?

Muhammad said the first step to preventing killings by young people is identifying those most likely to be involved and intervening before they become perpetrators. A majority of offenders typically show several risk factors, including a history of involvement in the criminal justice system, involvement in a formal or informal gang, adverse childhood experiences like poverty, and a connection to another victim of gun violence.

“The people are identifiable, the violence is predictable, and therefore it is preventable,” he said.

Prevention must involve targeted interventions that have “specificity and intensity,” Muhammad said. Research suggests violence interrupters and deterrence programs can help reduce homicides, nonfatal shootings and violent crime in cities, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.

In Maryland, Muhammad helped establish a program called the Thrive Academy in which people in the community reach out to young people at high risk of gun violence every day and meet with them in person several times a week to connect them with social services and develop positive relationships with them.

In the nine months after its launch, three-quarters of the 108 participants stayed free of gun-related or violent offenses, the Baltimore Sun reported. Juvenile Services Secretary Vincent Schiraldi said the results were “super-hopeful."

Over the past three decades, there has been enormous progress in developing research-based juvenile justice solutions, said Hunter Hurst, director of the National Center for Juvenile Justice . Hurst cautioned stakeholders to resist the urge to politicize crime data and respond too punitively or too broadly, adding that "over-response often impacts young people in communities of color disproportionately."

Though he called the lack of support for children struggling with mental health an ongoing crisis, Hurst said the country is in a much better position to deal with what he sees as only a slight rise in youth violence compared with when he first started his career in the 1990s.

"Hopefully this doesn't continue," Hurst said. "We should get back to normal."

Contributing: Cybele Mayes-Osterman , Natalie Neysa Alund , and Sara Chernikoff

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How a 'horrible perfect storm' fueled a 65% increase in homicides committed by kids