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Juveniles, Illicit Drug Activity, and Homicides against Law Enforcement Officers

Baylor University

James Nolan

West Virginia University

Samuel Berhanu

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Juvenile involvement in homicides increased dramatically during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Juvenile involvement in illicit drug markets is one of the proposed reasons for this increase. Building from Goldstein’s systemic model, this article argues that if juvenile participation in illicit drug markets was a cause of increased homicides by juveniles, then there should be a connection between juvenile involvement in the killing of police officers during the time period 1986 to 1991. This hypothesis is tested using the Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted records of police homicides during the 1980s and 1990s. The article finds that drug activity is an important predictor of whether a juvenile was involved in a police killing throughout the time period. Drug activity, however, is not any stronger during the late 1980s and early 1990s as the authors had hypothesized it would be. Follow-up analyses of those cases in which juveniles were involved failed to find substantive support for the systemic model. Implications for delinquency research are discussed.

Key Words: juvenile homicide • police homicide

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