By Khalida Sarwari
For the second year in a row, Monterey County had the highest youth homicide rate in the state, according to a study released Tuesday.
The study, titled “Lost Youth: A County-by-County Analysis of 2010 California Homicide Victims Ages 10 to 24,” was released by the Violence Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based gun control organization.
More young people are killed in Monterey County than in any other county at a rate of three times the overall state rate for the same age range, the study found.
Three other Bay Area counties were in the top 10 list of counties with the highest youth homicide victimization rate, including Alameda County, which came in second, and Contra Costa and San Francisco counties, which were sixth and eighth on the list respectively.
The report examined data from an unpublished California Department of Justice Supplementary Homicide Report and considered factors such as county, race, ethnicity, weapon used, circumstance, and location.
The study was funded by a grant from the California Wellness Foundation, a private foundation that provides grants for health promotion, wellness education, and disease prevention.
The study is available online at http://www.vpc.org/studies/cayouth2012.pdf.
