NCJ Number
126188
Date Published
1989
Length
45 pages
Annotation
This report provides an overview of juvenile court dispositions in Pennsylvania during 1989.
Abstract
A disposition is defined as a referral disposed of by the probation department and/or the court. Within a single referral, a youth may be charged with a number of offenses, and one youth may be involved in a number of dispositions during a calendar year. In addition, a youth may be referred on more than one occasion and receive only one disposition. Therefore, the data cannot be interpreted as the number of youth processed by the court or the number of offenses charged against juveniles. There were 33,336 delinquency-related cases disposed of in Pennsylvania during 1989. Probation was the most frequently used disposition (24.4 percent), followed by placement (13.8 percent), informal adjustment (13.4 percent), warned (9.6 percent), consent decree (8.8 percent), complaint withdrawn (8.6 percent), and continued on previous disposition (6.8 percent). In 1989, delinquency-related dispositions increased by 3.6 percent over 1988 figures. The median time lapse for all cases from referral to disposition was 55 days, a decrease of 1 day from the 1988 figure. Detailed statistical data on juvenile court dispositions by county are presented. 35 tables