An 11-year-old in Memphis was recently arrested for car theft and burglary of a business. It was his 10th arrest – on a variety of charges including multiple carjackings, robberies and car thefts – within the past three months.

”Can you imagine an 11-year-old behind the wheel of a car?” Memphis Police Department Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis said during a January juvenile crime forum. “Those are babies.”

Manufacturer mistakes and peer pressure are among the factors contributing to a rise in juvenile car theft, Davis said. But the factors that contribute to overall juvenile crime are much more complex, and they also include home or family life, adverse childhood experiences, relaxed gun laws and social media.

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And children participating in crimes are getting younger every year, said MPD’s deputy chief of special operations Stephen Chandler. So far in 2023, the youngest child the police department has arrested was 9.

“That’s just one instance,” Chandler said. “But it just shows that the ages are starting to get younger and younger. Last year, I believe (the youngest) was 10.”

The crimes have changed, said Buddy Chapman, executive director of CrimeStoppers. When he was director of MPD from 1976 to 1983, juvenile offenses mostly included delinquent crimes such as shoplifting, petty theft and auto thefts.

“We didn’t have the violence,” Chapman said. “We didn’t have the guns. We didn’t have a lot of the things that make it very, very violent now. I don’t think society knows quite what to do about it.”

Minors currently being held in detention are accused of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, carjacking, rape of a child, aggravated robbery and theft over $10,000, according to Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr.

“So you’re seeing just a hodgepodge of crime being committed by juveniles now,” Bonner said.

There were 907 total serious delinquent charges against 544 juveniles in Memphis and Shelby County in 2022, an increase of 6.5% in 2022 compared to the year before and 25.1% compared to 2020, according to data from the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission.

While it’s true the number of juvenile charges has risen since 2020, it’s still not at pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, the county’s high-water mark for juvenile charges in the past decade, there were 1,193 total serious delinquent charges against 788 juveniles. Compared to 2019, last year’s total charges were down 24%. An exact measurement of the number of crimes committed is not available.

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Still, concerns about juvenile crime – and specifically the age and nature of the crimes – abound, even within the police department. 

“I can’t think of a more pressing or urgent topic than the proliferation of juvenile crime in our city,” MPD’s Davis said. “When we’re discussing juveniles that are perpetrators of violent crime, or more importantly and more concerning, the frequency of juveniles as victims of violent crime.”

Garrett O’Brien, a former MPD Auto Theft Task Force officer who left the police department early this year, said he often saw the same children and teenagers getting in trouble repeatedly, which he prescribed as a lack of consequences. Often, if they are detained for a crime, it is only for a day. And then they wind up in the criminal justice system again. 

He has arrested the same kid twice within the same week. 

“It makes you feel, to some degree, hopeless because you’re like, ‘Why do I keep doing this?’ Because, I mean, these kids, they run in their cars, so then you’ve got to determine if it’s even worthwhile to chase them, which nine times out of 10, it’s not,” O’Brien said.

Bill Gibbons, executive director of the Public Safety Institute at the University of Memphis and president of the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, said juveniles are typically issued a summons unless a gun was involved. He thinks that needs to change. 

“I don’t think that that is adequate in terms of holding them accountable,” Gibbons said. “I know that’s very controversial, but we need to take a look at modifying it so that if a law enforcement officer ends up charging a juvenile with vehicle theft, for example, that officer has the option of taking that juvenile to detention for at least a short period of time.”

Dealing with young people is typically more dangerous than dealing with adults, O’Brien said. Recently, a K-9 officer was shot at by a 16- or 17-year-old. 

“He saw police and wanted him to go away, so he shoots at them,” O’Brien said. “That’s his logic. Typically that’s not what you’re going to see with an older individual.”

Chapman said teens are more difficult to manage: Physically, they are nearly adults, but mentally, they are not. He said violent crimes committed by juveniles are “always right on the edge of being deadly.”

Cara Suvall, assistant clinical professor of law at Vanderbilt Law School, said juveniles lack impulse control because their prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain that’s usually thought of as “the brakes or the higher level executive thinking” – is not fully developed. They likely will not begin to think about long-term consequences until their mid-20s. 

“And it’s especially problematic at this age range, because other parts of the brain are more fully developed,” she said.

Juvenile crime ‘begins in the home’

The other causes of juvenile crime can be complex. It almost always starts at home, former Shelby County Juvenile Court Judge Dan Michael said.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re in Memphis or Chicago or New Orleans, or if you’re in a little parish in Louisiana,” Michael said. “We all know where it begins; it begins in the home. What I saw in the courtroom a lot of times were moms – single moms – who may have three children, and they’re working two or three jobs to keep a roof over their heads, to feed them, keep them clothed, to keep a car going. And this one kid is acting out something awful, and she doesn’t know how to control them.”

Chandler said the main challenge, for him, comes from how the juvenile court system works.

Officers use a Detention Assessment Tool score, otherwise known as a “DAT score,” to determine if a child is eligible to be taken to detention. If the child scores 19 or above, they will be detained – but those scores are often reserved for violent and/or repeat offenders. 

The tool – one of the measures to come out of the United States Department of Justice oversight period following a 2012 investigation – was created by a local team that included University of Memphis faculty, court representatives, the sheriff’s department and others.

Juvenile Court does not detain offenders younger than 12, and the average child detained at Juvenile Court in Memphis is between 15 and 16, according to Stephanie Hill, the court’s chief administrative officer.

Hill said MPD would ideally call the court before transporting a minor and calculate a DAT score over the phone. That score would then advise if MPD should transport the youth or issue a summons.

She added that an officer still can use his or her discretion in determining whether to take the child to juvenile court or not.

Chandler said first-time offenders are usually given a juvenile summons and taken to a parent or legal guardian. The more they commit crimes, the harsher the punishment gets. 

“If that parent or legal guardian is not active in their lives, monitoring that child, then that child is right back out committing the crime again,” Chandler said. “Plus, by the time they do get enough points to get to detention, how many crimes have they committed in the process?”

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Alicia Washington, the Shelby County District Attorney General’s Office’s new chief juvenile prosecutor, also struggles with challenges in the system. She is troubled by the point at which services are provided. Those services include electronic monitoring and the Pursuit Center, which offers academic support and mentoring.

Before she joined the DA’s office, services were provided mainly after a case was closed, not at the beginning. 

“That’s basically our first contact with most of these children,” Washington said. “And it’s important that these children receive services as soon as possible. The sooner that children receive services, the more likely they are to have no more contact with juvenile court.”

Electronic monitoring includes the use of ankle monitors to track the person’s location, but Chandler said they are not always enforced. 

“Oftentimes, it falls under the radar, and the child is able to get outside the exclusion zone and go commit crimes,” Chandler said.

And only the juvenile court, not the police, has access to the information. 

During a Feb. 21 Memphis City Council committee meeting, Davis told council members MPD would like to obtain access to information from the ankle monitors. 

They would not track the juvenile’s live activity or “insert them into a crime,” Chandler said.

“But using the ankle monitor and the breadcrumb trail left by it, we would be able to go back and look at crimes in a particular area to determine whether that juvenile has been in the area for that crime,” Chandler said. “Then, of course, it’s incumbent upon us to find additional evidence that ties that juvenile to the crime.”

Davis said MPD leadership constantly struggles to come up with solutions to juvenile crime during sometimes long and drawn-out conversations.

“Sometimes we walk out of there scratching our heads because we don’t have all the answers, and all answers don’t rest within the Memphis Police Department,” Davis said. “Some of the answers rest in the homes of parents who sometimes don’t know where their children are. And I know that might be the elephant in the room, that in order to get past the hurt, we’ve got to dig into the wound a little bit deeper.”