Juvenile Court Statistics, 2005

• NCJ Number: 224619
• Author(s): Charles Puzzanchera; Melissa Sickmund
• Date Published: July 2008
• Length: 158 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2005-JL-FX-0250; 2007-JL-FX-0022
• Agencies: OJJDP-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Statistics

Annotation

This report describes delinquency cases handled by U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction and tracks trends in delinquency cases and status offense cases.

Abstract

This report is part of the Juvenile Court Statistics series; it describes delinquency cases handled between 1985 and 2005, and petitioned status offense cases handled between 1995 and 2005 by U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction. Chapters 2 and 3 present national estimates of delinquency cases handled by the juvenile courts in 2005 and analyze caseload trends since 1985. Chapter 2 describes the volume and rate of delinquency cases, demographic characteristics of the juveniles involved (age, gender, and race), and offenses charged. Chapter 3 traces the flow of delinquency cases from referral to court through court processing, examining each decision point (detention, intake decision, adjudication decision, and judicial disposition) and presenting data by demographic characteristics and offense. Chapter 4 presents national estimates of status offense cases formally handled by the juvenile courts in 2005 and caseload trends since 1995. It includes data on demographic characteristics, offenses charged, and case processing. Appendix A describes the statistical procedure used to generate these estimates; appendix B provides definitions of key terms used; and appendix C presents detailed tables showing the number of delinquency, status offense, and dependency cases handled by juvenile courts in 2005. Table notes at the end of the appendix indicate the source of the data and the unit of count. Data used in the analyses were collected from the National Juvenile Court Data Archive (the archive) by more than 2,100 courts with jurisdiction over 80 percent of the juvenile population in 2005. Tables, figures, and appendix