Experts are unsure why one crime is increasing

 A 16-year-old masked gunman and four friends rob a 21-year-old Orlando man walking home from work.

A teenage boy and three young men brandish a shotgun and snatch a 63-year-old woman's handbag as she and her husband unload groceries at home; they jump into the car and speed off.

A 14-year-old boy shoves his way into a young mother's home, snatches a puppy from her 1-year-old son and runs out the door.

Juvenile robbery arrests are skyrocketing in Central Florida, crime statistics show.

In recent months, the number of such arrests has nearly doubled in Orange, tripled in Seminole and climbed at double-digit rates in several other Central Florida counties.

"This is a big issue," Orange County Sheriff Kevin Beary said. "People need to wake up in our community."

For more than a decade in Florida, juvenile crime has been on the decline. But recent figures from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement show a startling jump in juvenile arrests for robbery in the first half of 2006 compared with the same period in 2005.

All this came during a six-month period when juvenile arrests in Florida, overall, declined slightly and juvenile murder arrests dropped.

Experts, including those in law enforcement, can't explain the sudden surge in robbery arrests. They attribute it to a variety of things: drugs, gangs, guns, poor parenting, inadequate schooling, a culture of violence and a failing juvenile-justice system.

Spike is national trend

"Everybody's got a theory," said Orlando police Chief Mike McCoy.

Violent crime by juveniles is on the rise in urban areas across the country, said Elizabeth Mustaine, a professor of sociology at the University of Central Florida.

"It's definitely a national trend," she said.

McCoy said the Orlando area is just now seeing a spike that other major cities first experienced two years ago.

Joseph B. Sanborn Jr., a UCF professor of criminal justice, said the increase in robbery arrests could be a sign that other forms of juvenile crime, long on the decline in Florida, also are about to climb.

Statewide, the number of juvenile robbery arrests climbed 22.8 percent in the first six months of 2006, compared with the same period in 2005. But in Central Florida, the news was much worse.

In Orange County, 108 underage robbery suspects were arrested, up 89.5 percent from the same period last year, according to FDLE. In fact, offenders 18 and younger now commit far more robberies in unincorporated Orange County than adults, Beary said.

More robbers are kids

"Eighty-four percent of our robberies are done by kids 13 to 18," he said.

The six-month FDLE robbery numbers for Seminole and Lake counties are smaller, but the rate increases are more dramatic. In Seminole, underage robbery arrests tripled, from nine in the first half of 2005 to 30 in the first half of this year. In Lake County, they went from zero to 13.

 From 1984 to 1994, juvenile crime in Florida soared. The state made headlines because of it.

The most infamous case happened during a Sept. 14, 1993, botched robbery attempt when a British tourist was shot to death and his girlfriend was wounded as they napped in their car at an Interstate 10 rest stop east of Tallahassee. Four boys, ages 13 to 17, were arrested.

The dead man, Gary Colley, was one of 10 foreign visitors killed during a 13-month crime wave -- much of it attributed to juveniles -- that damaged Florida's tourist economy and sent state lawmakers back to Tallahassee for a special legislative session to get tough on juvenile crime.

Since then, juvenile crime has dropped in Florida and has continued downward.

At some point, said Sanborn, the UCF professor, that's going to end.

"There's certainly a rebound effect that people should expect," he said.

Looking for solutions

Orange County deputies are already dealing with the effect.

In unincorporated Orange County, the juvenile robberies are concentrated largely in the same areas as homicides, Beary said: Holden Heights, Oak Ridge Road and Silver Star Road.

McCoy said short-term, violent young offenders need to be locked up to protect the public.

Seminole County Sheriff Don Eslinger said solving the problem means keeping youngsters in school and out of trouble, giving them better supervision, and helping parents.

Every adult in the Seminole County Jail now, said Eslinger, didn't start making bad decisions at age 18. That started when they were younger, he said.

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