The Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement profiles juvenile offenders in custody

Detailed data are available on juveniles in residential placement in the United States

Information on residents in juvenile custody is drawn from the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP). The U.S. Bureau of the Census administered the CJRP for the first time in 1997 for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). The CJRP, which is conducted biennially, provides the nation with the most detailed picture of juveniles in custody that has ever been produced. It asks all juvenile residential facilities in the U.S. to describe each youth assigned a bed in the facility on the fourth Wednesday in October. The census does not include federal facilities or those exclusively for drug or mental health treatment or for abused/neglected youth.

The CJRP collects individual data on each juvenile offender in residential placement, including gender, date of birth, race, placement authority, most serious offense charged, court adjudication status, date of admission, and security status. Facilities also provide information about the housing of overflow detention populations, physical layout of the facility, separation of residents, counts of residents age 21 and older, and the use of locked doors and/or gates. These detailed data are collected on residents who meet all of the following inclusion criteria for the census:

• Younger than 21.
• Assigned a bed in a residential facility at the end of the day on the fourth Wednesday of October.
• Charged with an offense or court adjudicated for an offense.
• In residential placement because of that offense.

CJRP does not capture data on juveniles held in adult prisons or jails; therefore, in the CJRP data, juveniles placed in juvenile facilities by criminal courts represent an unknown proportion of juveniles incarcerated by criminal courts.

One-day count and admission data give different views of residential populations

The CJRP provides 1-day population counts of juveniles in residential placement facilities. Such 1-day counts provide a picture of the standing population in facilities. One-day counts are substantially different from annual admission and release data, which provide a measure of facility population flow.

Juveniles may be committed to a facility as part of a court-ordered disposition or they may be detained prior to adjudication or after adjudication while awaiting disposition or placement elsewhere. In addition, a small proportion of juveniles may be admitted voluntarily in lieu of adjudication as part of a diversion agreement. Because detention stays tend to be short compared with commitment placements, detained juveniles represent a much larger share of population flow data than of 1-day count data.