• Crime isn’t limited to low-income, urban communities. 
  According to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, there was a steady increase in reported gang problems, particularly in suburban counties and small cities, between the mid-1990s and the early 21st Century.
  
  
• Parents should be equipped to protect their children from risky situations
  and influential peers. 
  Parents of youth and teens everywhere realize the increasing impact of peer influence on their children, but it’s not always easy to know all of your child’s friends. According to the American Society of Criminology, crime research has long suggested the association with delinquent peers is an important predictor of delinquent behavior.
  
  
• There is an increased need for law-related education among teens today.
  The Committee on Equal Justice For All explains there is a greater need today to provide teenagers with “Law-Related Education”—noting that everyday new laws are being placed into effect or enforced and many teenagers are unknowingly committing crimes.
  
  
• For African American, urban youth and teens in particular, the need for law-related education and empowerment is urgent.
  
  
• According to the Center on Disease Control and Prevention’s annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey, in 2001 whites and blacks reported similar rates of carrying a weapon (whites 17.9%, African Americans 15.2%),
  and similar rates of carrying a gun (whites 5.5%, African Americans 6.5%).  Yet, black youth represent 32%
  of all weapons arrests, and were arrested for weapons offenses at a rate twice that of whites.
  
  
• Blacks report being in a physical fight at a similar rate, but were arrested for aggravated assault at a rate
  nearly three times that of whites.
  
  
• And, while they represent a small percentage of U.S. males, the prevalence of imprisonment for black males
  is almost six times that of white males, and Hispanic males are imprisoned three times as often.