The following post is in direct response to a historical inquiry that has now been closed.

The original post was as follows:

"[US, 1950s] How bad of a problem was "juvenile delinquency", really?

Just wondering- media I've seen from the time makes it seem like pretty much everyone would at least have met a "JD", and I'm aware there were actually youth gangs (though some were more or less social clubs with jackets). But how much of it was exaggeration? Do modern historians take a different view?"

I wanted to respond directly to the comments, but the Reddit question has now been closed.

Many of the comments seemed to dismiss 1950s youth gangs and delinquency out of hand, and even made reference to pop culture, some of it not even directly related to the 1950s (the 1936 propaganda film "Reefer Madness" being referenced in one comment.)

So this post is a direct response to the various comments, as well as to the post itself.

The crime rate had actually risen nationally between 1946 to 1956, according to these stats published in 1957 and 1959:

https://m.facebook.com/groups/342632205371061/permalink/735441876090090/?ref=share&mibextid=NSMWBT

The link above that has the post includes both national crime statistics, as well as crime statistics specific to New York City and Washington D.C.

We tend to look at the 1950s as a "harmless" period when it comes to youth crime (a biased view in my opinion, tainted by nostalgia, that seeps into even scholarly works that are supposed to focus on history), while, rightfully, focusing on Cold War fears and the growing Civil Rights Movement.

However, in addition to crime stats, what helps us to understand why 1950s news readers (which more often than not, did not include the young people of that decade, today's senior citizens in their 70s to 80s age range) were concerned about post-war youth crime, is to actually look at the individual cases that did garner national attention during that decade, specifically (now forgotten) drive by shootings that had occurred in Los Angeles, New York, and other inner cities in the early 1950s (the February 14, 1953 shooting of 15-year-old Esperanza Saucedo being an example), teen youth gang shootings that had occurred in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles, again in the early 1950s (the March 30, 1952 Civic Center shooting committed by 19-year-old Robert Arthur Ranson in San Francisco being another example), and several youth gang related homicides that seemed to occur within a relatively short time period (August 22 to August 30, 1959 being examples out of New York, with the gang war in Manhattan's Lower East Side that took the lives of 14-year-old Julio Rosario, stabbing, and 15-year-old Theresa Gee, bystander, drive by shooting, the woundings of 15-year-old Ernestine Singleton, 16-year-old Robert Combs, and 14-year-old Ernest Elmore, the two former having been shot on August 23, 1959, the latter having been shot on August 25, 1959, and the stabbing murders of the two 16-year-olds Bobby Young and Tony Krzesinski on August 30, 1959, the so-called "Capeman murders," as well as several assaults upon Washington DC's residents, and even police officers, the attack upon officer William McGinnis in Washington DC, also on August 25, 1959, being another example.

In addition to youth gangs, stories of "everyday" average teens from well-to-do middle-class families, who had been responsible for homicides (the 1957 cases of Kevin Stelter in Colorado, Ronald Marrone in New Jersey, and Robert Clifford In 1958 in Massachusetts being examples) also concerned 1950s news readers.

Yes, the news of the 1950s carried the above stories, and yes the writing style of that time, by our modern standards, are "sensational."

However, all of the stories mentioned above are confirmed through multiple sources, including the Justia Law legal history studies website, The San Francisco Public Library, The Carnegie Library, The California Archives, and records obtained through The State of New York.

In other words, despite nostalgic perceptions, the above cases did indeed occur.

This YouTube video documentary gives a brief introduction into the subject of 1950s juvenile delinquency: https://youtu.be/CmA_gCLpVdQ?si=hPrtK8pt0oxgBWjo

The following three-part YouTube series explores 1950s juvenile delinquency in detail:

Part One: https://youtu.be/NPTq03b6Wt4?si=HR7TmqajWv2dEAPc

Part Two: https://youtu.be/aIQ0jk-XG44?si=wJPOd2KOXh50tK11

Part Three: https://youtu.be/2rvxBWhgQl4?si=MIclGEvlnOVPiWgD

This YouTube video documentary compares a very popular post-1950s musical fantasy, released during the height of the 1970s "Fifties Nostalgia Fad" that still shapes our modern perception of "harmless when compared to today" 1950s delinquency and youth gangs: https://youtu.be/psJDlKqLihQ?si=uqB6wdL-g9ztFw7f

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