NCJ Number
163709
Date Published
December 1996
Length
110 pages
Annotation
This report describes the juvenile delinquency and status offense cases handled by juvenile courts between 1985 and 1994 and profiles the estimated 1,555,200 delinquency cases and 126,900 status offender cases of 1994.
Abstract
The national estimates of 1994 juvenile court caseloads were based on analyses of approximately 762,000 automated case records provided to the National Juvenile Court Data Archive by more than 1,400 courts and summary statistics supplied by more than 400 other courts. The 1994 delinquency cases represented a 5-percent increase over the 1993 caseload. A person offense such as robbery or assault was the most serious charge in 22 percent of delinquency cases in 1994, compared with 16 percent in 1995. A property offense was the most serious charge in 52 percent of the cases, and drug law offenses accounted for 8 percent of the cases. Eighty-six percent of the delinquency cases were referred to courts by police. Fifty-five percent of the delinquency cases disposed by juvenile courts in 1994 were processed formally. Adjudicated juveniles were ordered to out-of-home placements in 141,300 of the cases. Twenty-nine percent of the juvenile status offense cases involved charges of truancy, 27 percent involved liquor law violations, 17 percent involved runaways, and 12 percent involved ungovernability. Figures, tables, glossary, and appended statistics for each State and county