The Informant

Richard Masoner

NPR’s Morning Edition has a series this week on what many are calling an “epidemic” of youth violence in Chicago. According to reporters David Schaper and Cheryl Corley, in Chicago, “nearly 700 children were hit by gunfire last year — an average of almost two a day — and 66 of them died. That number is up over the previous year, even though the overall number of homicides in Chicago fell last year to a 45-year low.”

Even as violent crime rates have gone down around the country, many areas are experiencing an increase in youth violence–especially among youth of color. According to a recent report by the Violence Policy Center, homicide is currently the leading cause of death for young Black people aged 14-24 in California. And Alameda County, with its 56 murders of youth in 2009, has the second highest youth homicide rate in the state.

Interestingly, Oakland, which sees most of the county’s homicides, has been looking to Chicago for guidance on ways to approach youth–mainly gang–violence. Tune into Crosscurrents on 91.7fm at 5pm Thursday for our own Ali Winston’s report on call-ins in Oakland, which are part of the same strategy started in Boston and Chicago for trying a “carrot and stick” type approach to getting people out of gangs.

Though troubling, reports of youth violence issues in places like Boston and Chicago (and Oakland) are not particularly surprising, as we’ve come to expect that cities will grapple with gangs, poverty, and the resulting violence. What we hear less about is best illustrated in this table of the counties with the highest youth homicide rates in California:

Violence Policy Institute

Monterey County, along the central coast, attributes much of its violence to Salinas, a primarily agricultural city of 150,000. Kern County’s biggest city is Bakersfield. Tulare, Merced, Stanislaus, and Solano are also primarily rural counties. In California at lest, youth violence seems to be just as much a rural issue as an urban one.