NCJ Number
117902
Date Published
1981
Length
553 pages
Annotation
This Family Court Disposition Study was conducted in New York City between April 1977 and March 1978 to provide a systematic information base on juvenile delinquency and status offense cases.
Abstract
Researchers studied 1,890 delinquency and 893 PINS (persons in need of supervision) cases that were randomly selected from cases in New York City's four major boroughs. Information was obtained on the behavior and circumstances alleged in the sample cases, characteristics of juvenile respondents and their families, and case processing. Interviews were also conducted with individuals involved in the Family Court system, such as arresting officers, intake officers, and judges. Offenses evaluated in the study were murder, manslaughter, assault, robbery, burglary, larceny, sexual offenses, and drug offenses. A significant relationship was found between the extent of victim injury and case outcome; the more serious the injury, the more likely the case was to remain active as it passed through possible termination points in the Family Court system. A similar significant relationship existed between the presence of a weapon and case outcome and between juvenile detention status and case outcome. When cases were categorized according to victim identity, cases in which there was no victim and cases in which the victim was a member of the juvenile's family tended to drop out of the system at the earliest point. Cases involving security guards and in which the victim was the friend of a juvenile tended to stay in the system longest. Additional information on the study methodology is appended. Tables.