Delinquency in the United States 1983

• NCJ Number: 104867
• Author(s): H N Snyder; T A Finnegan
• Date Published: 1987
• Length: 56 pages
• Grant Number(s): 85-JN-CX-0012
• Sponsoring Agency: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
• Corporate Author: National Ctr for Juvenile Justice
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Publication Type: Statistics
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This report describes the volume and characteristics of delinquency and status offense cases disposed in 1983 by courts with juvenile jurisdiction.

Abstract

Data include automated case-level and nonautomated court-level statistics provided to the National Juvenile Court Data Archive by State and county agencies. In 1983, courts disposed of an estimated 1,247,000 cases. While this represents a 5-percent decline since 1975, this reflects a 39-percent decline in status offense cases and only a 2-percent increase in delinquency cases. More than 75 percent of 1983 cases were referred by law enforcement agencies, although half of status offense referrals came from other sources such as parents, schools, and victims. In 19 percent of all cases, youth were detained in a secure setting at some point between court referral and final disposition. While this represents a decline overall, the decrease was largely accounted for by a drop in detained status offenders. In each year between 1975 through 1983, over half the cases were handled informally, without filing a petition. Of petitioned cases, 64 percent resulted in adjudication: 60 percent of these were placed on probation, and 29 percent received out-of-home placements. Males accounted for 80 percent of delinquency cases, females were charged in 64 percent of runaway cases. In general, male case rates increased with age. 14 tables, 9 figures, and glossary.