NCJ Number
79002
Date Published
1980
Length
81 pages
Annotation
Delinquency definitions and status offenses in the juvenile codes of the 50 States and the District of Columbia are reviewed.
Abstract
A table details the statutes' definitional schemes and presents for each State the terminology used to refer to juveniles engaging in delinquent and status offense conduct and the nature of conduct included under those jurisdictional categories. A narrative description follows the table. In general, delinquency includes conduct which would be criminal if committed by an adult, and status offenses include the noncriminal but proscribed conduct of juveniles. The variety of statutory classification schemes, however, makes uniform definitions futile. The 'Postscript' to the report highlights changes in legislation from the currency dates of the 1977 monograph to those in this report's appendix, changes in national profiles and totals, and legislative trends suggested by the data. The appendix contains the text of the definition or jurisdiction sections of the juvenile codes from which tabular data were derived and also reports the currency of the legislative material reviewed in each State. Rather than reporting the state of the law in all States on a particular date, the most recent statutory material available in each State was reviewed to obtain as current data as possible on each State's law.