This report presents statistics on delinquency and status-offense cases processed between 2005 and 2014 by U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction.
The data used in the analyses were reported to the National Juvenile Court Data Archive by just over 2,400 courts with jurisdiction over 84 percent of the juvenile population in 2014. The unit of count used in this report is the number of "cases disposed." A "case" represents a juvenile processed by a juvenile court on a new referral, regardless of the number of law violations contained in the referral. Following the introductory chapter, two chapters present national estimates of delinquency cases processed by the juvenile courts in 2014, and caseload trends since 2005 are reported. One of these chapters describes the volume and rate of delinquency cases, demographic characteristics of the juveniles involved, and offense charge. The other chapter traces the flow of delinquency cases from referral to court through court processing, examining each decisions point (detention, intake decision, adjudication decision, and judicial disposition); data are presented by demographic characteristics and offense. The fourth chapter presents national estimates of status offense cases formally processed by the juvenile courts in 2014 and caseload trends since 2005. Data are included on demographic characteristics, offenses charged, and case processing. This report makes two changes from previous reports. One change involves the reporting of race. "Hispanic" has been added to the previous options of white, Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Asian/Pacific Islander. The second change involves the presentation of trend data. Extensive tables and figures