The Impact of COVID-19 on the Nation's Juvenile Court Caseload

• NCJ Number: 309221
• Author(s): Sarah Hockenberry; Charles Puzzanchera
• Date Published: June 2024
• Length: 8 pages
• Agencies: OJJDP-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Publication

Annotation

This bulletin of the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ) and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) illustrates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on processing of the juvenile court caseload in the United States.

Abstract

This publication of the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ) and the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) provides a summary of data from the National Juvenile Court Data Archive that can help assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on juvenile court workloads. This bulletin focuses primarily on patterns in case processing activities which occurred in 2020, compared with an average of the case processing characteristics for the prior 3 years (2017-2019), but also displays data through 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on the policies, procedures, and data collection activities of juvenile courts relating to the referrals and processing of youth. Mitigation efforts such as stay-at-home orders and school closures impacted the volume and types of law-violating behavior by youth referred to juvenile court. Data submitted to the National Juvenile Court Data Archive project (Archive) provide unique insight into the impact of COVID-19 on juvenile court caseloads. The Archive collects juvenile court data from around the nation to create national estimates detailing demographic and case processing characteristics of delinquency and petitioned status offense cases handled in U.S. juvenile courts. The uniqueness of the data collected by the Archive allows for a monthly analysis of court case volume and processing, which provides insight into any changes in case processing characteristics both at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and over time.