Sexual Victimization Reported By Youth in Juvenile Facilities, 2018

• NCJ Number: 254450
• Author(s): Erica L. Smith; Jessica Stroop
• Date Published: December 2019
• Length: 31 pages
• Publication Series: BJS Full Reports
• Agencies: BJS
• Publication Type: Survey; Statistics; Report (Annual/Periodic)

Annotation

After providing the overall statistics on sexual victimization reported by youth in juvenile correctional facilities in 2018, this survey report distinguishes data for youth-on-youth sexual victimization, staff-on- youth sexual victimization, sexual victimization by victim gender, and facility-level and state-level estimates of sexual victimization.

Abstract

These findings are from the National Survey of Youth in Custody, 2018 (NSYC-3), which was conducted from March to December of 2018. The NSYC-3 was conducted in 327 facilities that housed juveniles, including 217 state-owned or operated facilities and 110 locally or privately operated facilities that held state-placed youth under contract. The NYC-3 sexual victimization survey was completed by 6,049 youth sampled from at least one facility in every state and the District of Columbia. The survey findings indicate that the overall rate of sexual victimization reported by youth declined from 9.5 percent in 2012 to 7.1 percent in 2018. Of the youth surveyed, 5.8 percent reported sexual misconduct by facility staff, and an estimated 2.1 percent of youth reported sexual misconduct by facility staff that involved force or coercion. Sexual victimization by another youth that involved force or coercion was reported by 1.9 percent of surveyed youth. Out of 113 facilities with enough interviews to qualify for facility-level rankings, 12 were given a high rating and 14 were rated low, based on the prevalence of sexual victimization reported by youth. Among states that were eligible for state-level estimates and had at least a 50-percent response rate among eligible sampled youth, the rate of sexual victimization reported by youth ranged from 0.0 percent to 12.3 percent. 7 tables and 2 figures