While Ohio Department of Youth Services – the prison system for people under the age of 18 – has seen a decline in the number of people sent to their facilities since 2016, the number of young women charged with serious crimes has increased dramatically. The crimes have also become more serious across the board, with crimes like murder and assault becoming bigger issues.
In a recent incident, a group of young girls on Nov. 25 were fighting in downtown Dayton during the holiday parade and tree lighting when an adult male tried to break the fight up by shooting a gun into the air and quickly dispersing the large crowds perched along Main Street.
“What has happened over the last 10 years is male crime has pretty much stagnated,” Capizzi said. “Female crime has just shot up 40%.”
Capizzi said he can’t pinpoint the exact reason why. There might also be trauma or something that has particularly hit teen girls hard, though he said he isn’t sure what is driving it.
The pandemic may also have played a role, as that hurt a lot of kids’ brain development. Schools across the country have reported an increase in fights, threats and students bringing weapons to school.
Even the students who had safe homes, food and stable parents had a hard time disrupting their routine during spring and fall 2020. But Capizzi pointed out that not everyone has a safe home environment, and for some kids, the stay-at-home order meant they had to stay in that unsafe environment, where a parent might be abusing them or neglecting them, all day without a break. That likely led to more trauma, he said.
A Center for Disease Control survey in 2021 showed more than a third (37%) of high school students reported they experienced poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 44% reported they persistently felt sad or hopeless during the past year.
While teen girls are more likely to be charged with a crime now than 10 years ago, they still only make up about 14% of the Department of Youth Service’s population between 2017 and 2021, compared to about 86% of teen boys, according to state numbers.
Capizzi is retiring on Jan. 31. But he says the entire community – not just the courts, or the schools, or even one community - needs to work together to help these kids, because the issue isn’t being seen in just one part of the area.
“Parents want the school to do everything. The community doesn’t want to take responsibility either,” he said. “So they want the school to do everything.”
Parents need to take more responsibility, Dayton Police Major Brian Johns told the Dayton Daily News earlier this year.
“It just seems like the issue is there’s no one watching these children or supervising these children, and I think that is a big issue that we have,” the major said.
He said in many cases, the kids are out and about without supervision and parents need to know where their children are and who they are hanging out with.
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