This fact sheet from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention presents data on delinquency cases in juvenile court for the year 2008.
Highlights from this fact sheet on delinquency cases in juvenile courts during 2008 include the following: overall, delinquency cases in juvenile courts increased by 44 percent between 1985 and 2008, with the number of cases increasing by 63 percent between 1985 and 1997, and then declining by 12 percent between 1997 and 2008; while the number of cases involving female delinquents more than doubled between 1985 and 2008, females still accounted for only 27 percent of the cases in 2008; while white youth accounted for 78 percent of the U.S. juvenile population, they accounted for only 63 percent of the delinquency cases, compared to Black youth who accounted for just 16 percent of the U.S. juvenile population yet accounted for 34 percent of the delinquency cases; the racial disparity in delinquency cases varied across the four offense categories of person offense, property offense, drug offense, and public disorder offense; and in 21 percent of the cases, the juveniles were placed in detention, with person offenses being the most likely to receive detention, 27 percent, followed by public order offenses at 23 percent. This fact sheet from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention presents data on delinquency cases in juvenile courts for the year 2008. Data for the report were obtained from the National Juvenile Court Data Archive. Figures and tables