Juvenile Court Statistics, 1988

• NCJ Number: 129575
• Author(s): H N Snyder; T A Finnegan; E H Nimick; M H Sickmund; D P Sullivan; N J Tierney
• Date Published: 1990
• Length: 214 pages
• Grant Number(s): 85-JB-CX-0012 (S-10)
• Sponsoring Agency: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)
• Corporate Author: National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Statistics
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

The analysis of 608,239 automated case records from 1,171 juvenile courts and of court summary statistics from an additional 368 courts formed the basis of these national estimates of juvenile court activity during 1988.

Abstract

The courts from which the data were gathered had jurisdiction over 62 percent of the juvenile population of the United States. During 1988 the courts disposed of an estimated 1,156,000 juvenile delinquency cases, an increase of less than 1 percent over the 1987 caseload. Males were involved in 81 percent of all delinquency cases. Fifty-nine percent of the delinquency cases involved property offenses; 16 percent, personal offenses; and 7 percent, drug law offenses. An estimated 12,000 cases were judicially waived to criminal court, a 14-percent increase over 1987. Fifty-three percent of these cases involved property offenses. The court handled just over half of the cases informally, dismissing almost half of them. Thirty percent of the adjudicated youth were placed in residential facilities, and 57 percent were placed on formal probation. The courts also handled 82,000 status offense cases, most often involving alcohol law violations, truancy, ungovernability, and running away. Figures, tables, and appended glossary, methodological information, and data by county