Photo by Chris DiGiamo.

The front page of yesterday’s D.C. Examiner was as loud as it was shocking: “Violent crimes by teens soar in D.C.: Homicide, rape, assault up 10 percent.” Agggh! You afraid yet? If not, maybe you should be — summer break is but a few weeks away, meaning that we’re in for a violent, bloody few months, right?

Well, maybe not.

The headline accompanied an article written by crime writer Scott McCabe that somewhat misinterpreted police statistics, so much so that it failed to note that juvenile arrests in the first five months of 2011 are actually down from the same period last year. (Juvenile arrests also fell from 2009 to 2010.)

According to crime reports from the Research and Analysis Branch of the Metropolitan Police Department, there’s been an overall 1.9 percent decrease in juvenile arrests this year as compared to 2010. Even more to the point of the Examiner’s headline — homicides and assaults certainly aren’t soaring. In the first five months of 2010, juvenile offenders were involved in six homicides. In the same period one year later, there hasn’t been any change at all — six again. As for aggravated assaults, those are down 9.5 percent, relative to 2010.

McCabe wasn’t totally off base, though. Rapes and sexual abuse have jumped 900 percent, from one case in the first five months of 2010 to 10 cases in the same period in 2011. Theft, burglaries and other assaults committed by juveniles are also up, not to mention “fugitive/release violations,” which skyrocketed close to 1,400 percent from one year to the next. McCabe would have done well to focus on robberies, which generally account for the majority of crimes committed by juveniles. (There has been a 10 percent increase from 2010 to 2011 in robbery-related arrests amongst juveniles.)

So what gives? Are kids really involved in more crimes? Should we expect a particularly bloody summer? It’s tough to predict the future, but police stats don’t indicate that we’ve suddenly reached a tipping point.

According to one organization that focuses on juvenile justice, it’s not that more kids are committing more crimes, but that MPD has gotten better about specifying what crimes they’re actually committing. According to 2011 police statistics, the categories of “Other Felonies” and “Other Misdemeanors” saw decreases of 86 and 77 percent, respectively. Basically, fewer crimes are being lumped into these broad categories, and are instead being listed as specific offenses. (McCabe quotes a George Washington professor making this exact point, though his argument is offered almost as an afterthought.) In a fact sheet responding to the article, the organization, D.C. Lawyers for Youth, stated that “MPD should be applauded for their recent effort to more accurately categorize juvenile arrests, but media, advocates, and policymakers need to be careful to note the adjustments made to the data and changes in policies and practice by MPD.”

Is this to say that kids don’t engage in violent crimes? Certainly not. But the Examiner’s headline and accompanying article over-simplify the problem, even more so when you consider that adults have been responsible for 93 percent of the close to 17,000 crimes that were logged by MPD in the first five months of this year. In fact, adults are overrepresented in arrests relative to their proportion of the District’s population.

“While accurate coverage of juvenile justice issues is needed here in D.C., today’s article exaggerated the impact of violent crimes in the District in ways that could undermine successful reforms,” wrote D.C. Lawyers for Youth. “A true analysis of the data is necessary for an honest, informed conversation about what policies and practices will do the most to reduce crime and its impact on communities here in the District.”

Eduardo Ferrer, the organization’s Chief Operating Officer, is concerned that the D.C. Council will react without fully considering what the numbers mean. “We’re worried that the council will base policies on these numbers,” he told DCist. “We want a real, honest conversation about what’s going on.”