Kimberly Chipman, RN 2nd Year Law Student The University of Dayton School of Law Fall 1998
Introduction
Violence is the number one killer of children between the ages of 15-24. In 1989, the FBI released statistics that 21,500 people died as the victims of homicides. That translates into a homicide rate of 8.7 per 100,000 population. The homicide rate for young males ages 15-24 is 21.9 per 100,000. The homicide rate for young black males in this age category is 85.6 per 100,000! The overall homicide rate for young males in the United States was between 4 and 73 times higher than the homicide rate for young males in any other industrialized nation. Firearms were used in three-quarters of the homicides in the United States. The top five "lethal" cities in the United States are Detroit, Washington, D.C., Dallas, Jacksonville, and Baltimore. William Julius Wilson at the University of Chicago established that homicide rates soar in neighborhoods where men have no jobs, children are raised without fathers, and social institutions are in disarray...