Mike Males

About the author: Mike Males serves on the California Wellness Foundation Adolescent Health Advisory Board, and he has written extensively on youth and social issues for the New York Times, the Lancet, Phi Delta Kappan, In These Times, and Scribner's Encyclopedia of Violence in America.

Although researchers predicted soaring increases in juvenile violence for the 1990s, statistics show that these dire warnings were exaggerated by as much as 25 percent. In fact, juvenile crime actually declined during the '90s, while serious offenses by adults were on the rise. The media, however, continue to blame young people for violence, even though they are responsible for a very small percentage of violent crime in America. In effect, America's children are being scapegoated by the aging, white citizens in power who are becoming increasingly fearful of the growing ethnic...