MENU TITLE: Juvenile Court Statistics 1993: Acknowledgements, Table of Contents, Preface, and. Introduction Series: OJJDP Published: June 1996 14 pages 27,725 bytes Juvenile Court Statistics 1993 JEFFREY A. BUTTS HOWARD N. SNYDER TERRENCE A. FINNEGAN ANNE L. AUGHENBAUGH ROWEN S. POOLE ------------------------------ This report was prepared by the National Center for Juvenile Justice, the research division of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and was supported by grant number #95-JN- FX-0008 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs (OJP), U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view or opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. The current edition of the OJP Financial and Administrative Guide for Grants (OJP M 7100.1D) provides guidance on allowable printing activities. Copyright 1995, National Center for Juvenile Justice, 710 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15219-3000 412-227-6950. ISSN No. 0091B3278 Suggested citation: Butts, Jeffrey A., Snyder, Howard N., Finnegan, Terrence A., Aughenbaugh, Anne L., and Poole, Rowen S. (1996) Juvenile Court Statistics 1993. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. ------------------------------ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This report is a product of the National Juvenile Court Data Archive, which is funded by grants to the National Center for Juvenile Justice from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), U.S. Department of Justice. Joseph Moone is the OJJDP Program Manager for the project. The entire staff of the National Juvenile Court Data Archive are collectively responsible for the creation and production of this report: Anne L. Aughenbaugh, Manager of Data Collection Jeffrey A. Butts, Ph.D., Project Manager Terrence A. Finnegan, Senior Computer Programmer Sheila Loyacona, Research Assistant Intern Eileen Poe-Yamagata, Research Assistant Rowen S. Poole, Computer Programmer Angela L. Sanders, Research Assistant Intern Melissa Sickmund, Ph.D., Senior Research Analyst Howard N. Snyder, Ph.D., Project Director Dennis P. Sullivan, Data Analyst Nancy Tierney, Administrative Assistant Advisers to the Archive are Linda Bender, Pennsylvania Center for Juvenile Justice Training and Research; Alfred Blumstein, Carnegie Mellon University; Carol Burgess, Maricopa County Juvenile Court; David Farrington, Cambridge University; Daniel Kasprzyk, National Center for Education Statistics; and Malcolm Klein, University of Southern California. Their support and involvement are deeply appreciated. Juvenile Court Statistics would not be possible were it not for the State and local agencies that take the time each year to honor our requests for data and documentation. The following agencies contributed case-level data or court-level aggregate statistics for this report: Alabama -- Alabama Department of Youth Services. Alaska -- Alaska Court System. Arizona -- Supreme Court of Arizona and the Maricopa County Juvenile Court Center. Arkansas -- Administrative Office of the Courts. California -- Judicial Council of California and the following county probation departments: Alameda, Kings, Los Angeles, Marin, Orange, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Stanislaus, and Ventura. Colorado -- Colorado Judicial Department. Connecticut -- Chief Court Administrator's Office. Delaware -- Family Court of the State of Delaware. District of Columbia -- District of Columbia Superior Court. Florida -- Department of Juvenile Justice, Bureau of Research and Data. Georgia -- Administrative Office of the Courts. Hawaii -- The Judiciary, Administrative Office of the Courts. Idaho -- Administrative Office of the Courts. Illinois -- Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts, Probation Division, and the Circuit Court of Cook County, Juvenile Division. Indiana -- Division of State Court Administration. Iowa -- State Court Administrator. Kansas -- Office of Judicial Administration. Kentucky -- Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts. Louisiana -- Judicial Council of the Supreme Court of Louisiana. Maine -- Administrative Office of the Courts. Maryland -- Department of Juvenile Justice. Massachusetts -- Administrative Office of the Courts. Michigan -- State Court Administrative Office. Minnesota -- Minnesota Supreme Court Information System. Mississippi -- Mississippi Department of Human Services, Division of Youth Services. Missouri -- Department of Social Services, Division of Children and Youth Services. Montana -- Board of Crime Control and the Office of Court Administration. Nebraska -- Nebraska Crime Commission. New Hampshire -- Administrative Office of the Courts. New Jersey -- Administrative Office of the Courts. New Mexico -- Administrative Office of the Courts and Children, Youth and Families Department. New York -- Office of Court Administration and the State of New York, Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives. North Carolina -- Administrative Office of the Courts. North Dakota -- Supreme Court, Office of State Court Administrator. Ohio -- Supreme Court of Ohio and the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Division. Oregon -- Judicial Department. Pennsylvania -- Juvenile Court Judges' Commission. Rhode Island -- Administrative Office of State Courts and Rhode Island Family Court. South Carolina -- Department of Juvenile Justice. South Dakota -- State Court Administrator's Office. Tennessee -- Tennessee Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges and the Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County. Texas -- Texas Juvenile Probation Commission. Utah -- Utah State Juvenile Court. Vermont -- Supreme Court of Vermont, Office of the Court Administrator. Virginia -- State Administrative Office and Department of Family and Youth Services. Washington -- Office of the Administrator for the Courts. West Virginia -- Juvenile Justice Committee, West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. Wisconsin -- Supreme Court of Wisconsin. Wyoming -- Supreme Court of Wyoming, Court Coordinator's Office. ------------------------------ TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword Acknowledgments Preface Introduction National Estimates of Delinquency Cases National Estimates of Petitioned Status Offense Cases Methods Glossary of Terms Appendix: Reported Juvenile Court Cases Disposed in 1993 by County ------------------------------ PREFACE This is the 67th report in the Juvenile Court Statistics series. It describes the delinquency and status offense cases handled by U.S.juvenile courts between 1989 and 1993. National estimates of juvenile court caseloads in 1993 were based on analyses of approximately 690,000 automated case records contributed to the National Juvenile Court Data Archive by nearly 1,400 courts with juvenile jurisdiction and analyses of court-level summary statistics supplied by more than 400 additional courts. Altogether, the courts contributing data for this report had jurisdiction over 67% of the juvenile population in 1993. The first Juvenile Court Statistics report was published in 1929 by the U.S. Department of Labor and described cases handled by 42 courts during 1927. During the next decade, Juvenile Court Statistics reports were based on statistical cards filled out for each delinquency, status offense, and dependency case handled by the courts participating in the reporting series. The Children's Bureau (within the Department of Labor) tabulated the information on each card, including the age, sex, and race of the youth; the reason for referral; the manner of dealing with the case; and the final disposition of the case. During the 1940's, however, the collection of case-level data was abandoned due to its high cost. From the 1940's until the mid-1970's, Juvenile Court Statistics reports were based on the simple, annual case counts reported to the Children's Bureau by participating courts. In 1957 the Children's Bureau initiated a new data collection design that enabled the Juvenile Court Statistics series to develop statistically sound, national estimates. The Children's Bureau, which had been transferred to the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), developed a probability sample of more than 500 courts and asked each court in the sample to submit annual counts of delinquency, status offense, and dependency cases. Soon, however, this design proved difficult to sustain because some of the courts began to drop out of the sample. At the same time, a growing number of courts outside the sample began to compile comparable statistics. By the late 1960's, HEW ended the sample-based effort and returned to the policy of collecting annual case counts from any court able to provide them. However, the series continued to generate national estimates using data from these nonprobability samples. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) assumed responsibility for Juvenile Court Statistics following the passage of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974. The National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ) was awarded a grant in 1975 to continue the report series. Although agreeing to continue the procedures established by HEW in order to ensure reporting continuity, NCJJ also began to investigate methods of improving the quality and detail of national statistics. A critical innovation was made possible by the proliferation of computers during the 1970's. As NCJJ wrote to agencies across the country asking them to complete the annual juvenile court statistics form, some agencies offered to send the automated case-level data collected by their management information systems. Over a period of years, NCJJ learned to combine these automated records to produce a detailed national portrait of juvenile court activity -- the original objective of the Juvenile Court Statistics series. The project's transition from using annual case counts to analyzing automated case-level data was completed with the production of Juvenile Court Statistics 1984. For the first time since the 1930's, Juvenile Court Statistics contained detailed, case-level descriptions of the delinquency and status offense cases handled by U.S. juvenile courts. This case-level detail would continue to be the emphasis of the reporting series throughout the next decade. Thus, the content of Juvenile Court Statistics was once again consistent with the goals established by those who began this work more than 60 years earlier. DATA ACCESS The data used in this report are stored in the National Juvenile Court Data Archive at NCJJ in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Archive contains the most detailed information available on youth involved in the juvenile justice system and on the activities of U.S. juvenile courts. Designed to facilitate research on the juvenile justice system, the Archive's data files are available to policymakers, researchers, and students. In addition to national data files, State and local data can be provided to researchers. With the assistance of Archive staff, selected files can be merged for cross-jurisdictional and longitudinal analyses. Upon request, project staff are also available to perform special analyses of the Archive's data files. Researchers are encouraged to contact the Archive directly in order to explore the possible uses of Archive data files for their work. ------------------------------ INTRODUCTION This report describes delinquency and status offense cases handled by U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction between 1989 and 1993. Courts with juvenile jurisdiction may handle a variety of matters, including child abuse and neglect, traffic violations, child support, and adoptions. This report focuses on cases involving juveniles charged with law violations (delinquency or status offenses). UNIT OF COUNT In measuring the activity of juvenile courts, one could count the number of offenses referred; the number of cases referred; actual filings of offenses, cases, or petitions; the number of disposition hearings; or the number of youth handled. Each "unit of count" has its own merits and disadvantages. The unit of count used in Juvenile Court Statistics (JCS) is the number of "cases disposed." A "case" represents a youth processed by a juvenile court on a new referral regardless of the number of law violations contained in the referral. A youth charged with four burglaries in a single referral would represent a single case. A youth referred for three burglaries and referred again the following week on another burglary charge would represent two cases, even if the court eventually merged the two referrals for more efficient processing. The fact that a case is "disposed" means that a definite action was taken as the result of the referral -- i.e., a plan of treatment was selected or initiated. It does not mean a case was necessarily closed or terminated in the sense that all contact between the court and the youth ceased. For example, a case is considered to be disposed when the court orders probation, not when a term of probation supervision is completed. COVERAGE A basic question for this reporting series is what constitutes a referral to juvenile court. The answer depends in part on how each jurisdiction organizes its case screening function. In many communities all juvenile matters are first screened by an intake unit within the juvenile court. The intake unit determines whether the matter should be handled informally (i.e., diverted) or petitioned for formal handling. In data files from communities using this type of system, a delinquency or status offense case is defined as a court referral at the point of initial screening, regardless of whether it is handled formally or informally. In other communities the juvenile court is not involved in delinquency or status offense matters until another agency (e.g., the prosecutor's office or a social service agency) has first screened the case. In other words, the intake function is performed outside the court, where some matters are diverted to other agencies without the court ever handling them. Status offense cases, in particular, tend to be diverted from court processing in this manner. Since its inception, Juvenile Court Statistics has adapted to the changing structure of juvenile court processing nationwide. As court processing became more diverse, the reporting series broadened its definition of the juvenile court to incorporate other agencies that perform what can generically be considered juvenile court functions. In some communities data collection has expanded to include departments of youth services, child welfare agencies, and prosecutors' offices. In other communities, this expansion has not been possible. Therefore, while there is complete coverage of formally handled delinquency and status offense cases and adequate coverage of informally handled delinquency cases in this reporting series, the coverage of informally handled status offense cases is not sufficient to support the generation of national estimates. For this reason, JCS reports do not present national estimates of informally handled status offense cases. (Subnational analyses of these cases are available from the Archive.) JUVENILE COURT PROCESSING Any attempt to describe juvenile court caseloads at the national level must devise a generic model of court processing to serve as a common framework. In order to analyze and present data about juvenile court activities in diverse jurisdictions, the Archive strives to fit the processing characteristics of all jurisdictions into the following general model: Intake. Referred cases are first screened by an intake department (either within or outside the court). The intake department may decide to dismiss the case for lack of legal sufficiency or to resolve the matter formally or informally. Informal (i.e., nonpetitioned) dispositions may include a voluntary referral to a social agency for services, informal probation, or the payment of fines or some form of voluntary restitution. Transfer. The intake department may decide that a case should be removed from juvenile court and handled instead in criminal (adult) court. In such cases a petition is usually filed in juvenile court asking the juvenile court judge to waive jurisdiction over the case. The juvenile court judge decides whether the case merits criminal prosecution.[1] When a transfer request is denied, the matter is usually scheduled for an adjudicatory hearing in the juvenile court. Petitioning. If the intake department decides that a case should be handled formally within the juvenile court, a petition is filed, and the case is placed on the court calendar (or docket) for an adjudicatory hearing. A small number of petitions is dismissed for various reasons before the adjudicatory hearing is actually held. Adjudication. At the adjudicatory hearing, a youth may be adjudicated (judged) a delinquent or status offender, and the case would then proceed to a disposition hearing. Alternatively, a case can be dismissed or continued in contemplation of dismissal. In these cases, the court often recommends that the youth take some actions prior to the final adjudication decision, such as paying restitution or voluntarily attending drug counseling. Disposition. At the disposition hearing, the juvenile court judge determines the most appropriate sanction, generally after reviewing a predisposition report prepared by a probation department. The range of options available to a court typically includes commitment to an institution; placement in a group or foster home or other residential facility; probation (either regular or intensive supervision); referral to an outside agency, day treatment, or mental health program; or imposition of a fine, community service, or restitution order. Detention. A youth may be placed in a detention facility at different points as a case progresses through the juvenile justice system. Detention practices also vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. A judicial decision to detain or continue detention may occur before or after adjudication or disposition. This report includes only those detention actions that result in a youth being placed in a restrictive facility under court authority while awaiting the outcome of the court process. This report does not include detention decisions made by law enforcement officials prior to court intake or those occurring after the disposition of a case (e.g., temporary holding of a youth in a detention facility while awaiting availability of a court-ordered placement). DATA QUALITY Juvenile Court Statistics relies on the secondary analysis of data originally compiled by juvenile courts or juvenile justice agencies to meet their own information and reporting needs. As a consequence, incoming data files are not uniform across jurisdictions. However, these data files are likely to be more detailed and accurate than data files compiled by local jurisdictions merely to comply with a mandated national reporting program. The heterogeneity of the contributed data files greatly increases the complexity of the Archive's data processing tasks. Contributing jurisdictions collect and report information using their own definitions and coding categories. Consequently, the detail reported in some data sets is not contained in others. Even when similar data elements are used, they may have inconsistent definitions or overlapping coding categories. The Archive restructures contributed data into standardized coding categories in order to combine information from multiple sources. The standardization process requires an intimate understanding of the development, structure, and content of each data set received. Codebooks and operation manuals are studied, data suppliers interviewed, and data files analyzed to maximize the understanding of each information system. Every attempt is made to ensure that only compatible information from the various data sets is used in standardized data files. While the heterogeneity of the data adds complexity to the development of a national data file, it has proven to be valuable in other applications. The diversity of the data stored in the National Juvenile Court Data Archive enables the data to support a wider range of research efforts than would a uniform, and probably more general, data collection form. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) is limited by necessity to a small number of relatively broad offense codes. The UCR offense coding for larceny-theft combines shoplifting with a number of other larcenies. Thus, the data are useless for studies of shoplifting. In comparison, many of the Archive's data sets are sufficiently detailed to enable a researcher to distinguish offenses that are often combined in other reporting series -- shoplifting can be distinguished from other larcenies, joy-riding from motor vehicle theft, and armed robbery from unarmed robbery. The diversity of these coding structures allows researchers to construct data sets that contain the detail demanded by their research designs. VALIDITY OF THE ESTIMATES The national estimates presented in this report were generated with data from a large nonprobability sample of juvenile courts. Consequently, statistical confidence in the estimates cannot be mathematically determined. Although statistical confidence would be greater if a probability sampling design were used, the cost of such an effort has long been considered prohibitive. Secondary analysis of available data is the best practical alternative for developing an understanding of the Nation's juvenile courts.[2] National estimates for 1993 are based on analyses of individual case records from nearly 1,400 courts with jurisdiction over half of the U.S. juvenile population. The weighting procedures that generate national estimates from this sample control for many factors: the size of a community; the demographic composition of its youth population; the volume of cases referred to the reporting courts; the age, sex, and race of the youth involved; offense characteristics of the cases; the court's response to the cases (manner of handling, detention, adjudication, and disposition); and the nature of each court's jurisdictional responsibilities (i.e., upper age of original jurisdiction). The accuracy of the Archive's national estimates can be assessed by comparing them with estimates developed by other national data systems. For example, each JCS report provides an estimate of the number of referrals that juvenile courts received from law enforcement. On the other hand, the FBI's Crime in the United States reports provide the number of cases that law enforcement agencies referred to juvenile courts each year. FBI data are from the UCR series and are collected from a nonprobability sample of police agencies. For the past decade, referral trends reported in UCR and JCS data have been parallel. From 1985 to 1992, the overall difference between the number of referrals estimated from UCR and JCS data was just 7%, a finding that supports the validity of both estimates. STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT This report describes the delinquency and status offense cases handled by juvenile courts between 1989 and 1993. First, the report presents national estimates of petitioned and nonpetitioned delinquency cases handled by courts with juvenile jurisdiction. Next, national estimates of petitioned (formally processed) status offense cases are presented. Together, these sections provide a detailed national portrait of juvenile court cases, including the offenses involved, sources of referral, detention practices, and dispositions ordered. A brief description of the statistical procedure used to generate these estimates can be found in the Methods section. For readers wishing to know more about the estimation procedure, a companion volume to this report, Detailed Supplement to Juvenile Court Statistics 1993, is available upon request from the Archive. Readers are encouraged to consult the Glossary of Terms for definitions of key terms used throughout the report. Few terms in the field of juvenile justice have widely accepted definitions. The terminology used in this report has been carefully developed to communicate the findings of the work as precisely as possible without sacrificing their applicability to multiple jurisdictions. Finally, the appendix presents a complete list of the number of delinquency, status offense, and dependency cases handled by juvenile courts in 1993. Footnotes indicate the source of the data and the unit of count. Because courts report their statistical data using various units of count (e.g., cases disposed, offenses referred, petitions), the reader is cautioned against making cross-jurisdictional comparisons before studying the accompanying footnotes. OTHER SOURCES OF JUVENILE COURT DATA JCS reports prior to 1992 contained a series of tables presenting national estimates for the 5 individual years of report coverage and detailed current year data, as well as tables containing subnational, nonestimated data analyses on specific offenses. These tables are no longer included in Juvenile Court Statistics but may be obtained in the Detailed Supplement to Juvenile Court Statistics 1993, which is available directly from NCJJ. The national delinquency estimates presented in this report are also available in an easy-to-use software package, Easy Access to Juvenile Court Statistics 1989-1993. With the support of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, NCJJ distributes this package to facilitate independent analysis of Archive data while eliminating the need for statistical analysis software. All necessary data files as well as the NCJJ software are available on a single 3«-inch diskette that can be easily installed on an IBM- compatible personal computer or network. To order a complimentary copy of Easy Access to Juvenile Court Statistics 1989-1993, contact the National Center for Juvenile Justice at 412-227-6950. ------------------------------ NOTES 1. Mechanisms of transfer to criminal court vary by State. In some States a prosecutor has the authority to file juvenile cases that meet specified criteria directly in criminal court. This report, however, includes only cases that were transferred as a result of judicial waiver. 2. For more detailed analyses of the JCS national estimates and their accuracy, see: Jeffrey A. Butts and Howard N. Snyder. 1995. A Study to Assess the Validity of the National Estimates Developed for the Juvenile Court Statistics Series. Pittsburgh, PA: National Center for Juvenile Justice.