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