Details: There has been growing concern in the city that during the last decade, juveniles (persons under 18) have been responsible for a rising share of violent crimes

Your assignment is comprehensible and rather simple, but it requires a lot of attention. First of all, take a look to the possible sources of data that you can find on the Internet and in your library. This will help you select the type of crime you want to discuss.

Here are some sources I could find (I have randomly selected the New York State):

US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov
FBI, the best statistics I could find, include a division per year, per state and per age of the offender: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/00cius.htm and http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_00/xl/00tbl05.xls

You can also see:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/pct/cspdf.html
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm
http://criminaljustice.state.ny.us

You can see that some statistics are global (do not discriminate by age) and other include the indicator age. You will be mostly interested in the last one. Nevertheless, I suggest that you include the general population data, so when you make your presentation you will be able to compare the two groups (general population / juvenile population) and to calculate the percentages that juvenile commited crimes represent in the total.

Also take care to the statistics that refer to a state or only to a city. In all cases, you have to include data referring to the state.

Take your time and concentrate on the accuracy of your presentation. It is not an interpretative assignment, but an evaluative one, so accuracy and the comprehensive form of your presentation are crucial.

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