Offenders in Juvenile Court, 1994

• NCJ Number: 162423
• Author(s): Jeffrey A. Butts Ph.D.
• Date Published: October 1996
• Length: 12 pages
• Grant Number(s): 95-JN-FX-0008
• Agencies: OJJDP
• Publication Type: Survey

Annotation

Data from the National Juvenile Court Data Archive formed the basis of an analysis of the caseloads, offenses, and other characteristics of the more than 1.5 million juvenile delinquency cases processed by juvenile courts in 1994.

Abstract

The number of cases represented a 5-percent increase over the 1993 caseload and a 41-percent increase over the number of cases handled in 1995. The homicide caseload increased 144 percent between 1985 and 1994; the number of cases involving drug law offenses increased 35 percent between 1993 and 1994. Crimes against persons accounted for 22 percent of all cases in 1994. The number of delinquency cases involving female juveniles increased 54 percent between 1985 and 1994, while cases involving males increased 38 percent. Fifty-five percent of the delinquency cases processed by courts with juvenile jurisdiction involved formal petitions. Fifty-eight percent of the cases that were formally petitioned and scheduled for an adjudicatory or waiver hearing in juvenile court were adjudicated delinquent, and slightly more than 1 percent were transferred to adult criminal court. Figures, tables, and description of the methodology and the National Juvenile Court Data Archive