There is a brief look at the statistics concerning juveniles as perpetrators and as victims, including child maltreatment in the family. The article presents five major reasons for the increase in juvenile crime: (1) the increasingly negative impact of social changes over the past two decades (loss of a sense of community, reflected in withdrawal of financial resources and services that benefit the less affluent and decaying cities which lack adequate health care and educational systems); (2) family demographics (increasing divorce, growing birth rate among unmarried women, many of whom are children themselves); (3) firearms (easy availability, proliferation, media violence which desensitizes juveniles and others to the pain of violence, injury and death); (4) gangs (increasingly violent, more involvement in criminal activities); and (5) drugs (use by juveniles, exposure in-utero). Endnotes