OJJDP Bulletin -- November 2002 -- Juvenile Arrests 2000


J. Robert Flores, Administrator	November 2002

Juvenile Arrests 2000

Howard N. Snyder

Introduction

The murder rate in 2000 was the lowest since 1965

Juvenile arrests for violence in 2000 were the lowest since 1988

Few juveniles were arrested for violent crime

Juvenile arrests for property crimes in 2000 were the lowest in at least three decades

Most arrested juveniles were referred to court

In 2000, 28% of juvenile arrests were arrests of females

Females were a larger proportion of juvenile arrests in early teens

Juvenile arrests disproportionately involved minorities

The juvenile contribution to crime has declined

Notes

Data source note

NCJ 191729

This Bulletin was prepared under cooperative agreement number 1999�JN�FX�K002 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice.

Points of view or opinions expressed in this document are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of OJJDP or the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is a component of the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, and the Office for Victims of Crime.

A Message From OJJDP

Juvenile violent crime arrests, which increased through the mid-1980s and early 1990s, have maintained their steady decline for the sixth consecutive year.

The juvenile arrest rate for violent crime in 2000 was 41% below its peak in 1994, reaching its lowest level in 14 years. The juvenile arrest rate for murder dropped 74% from its peak in 1993 to its lowest level since the 1960s. Indeed, the number of juvenile arrests in each of the categories tracked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in its Violent Crime Index (murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) has declined once again.

Such positive developments, however, should not be a cause for complacency nor lead us to falter in our commitment to combat juvenile violent crime. In particular, we must remain vigilant in our efforts to reduce recidivism by ensuring that serious and violent juvenile offenders who have been released from correctional facilities are able to make a successful reentry into their communities.

Juvenile Arrests 2000 provides a summary and an analysis of national and State juvenile arrest data presented in the FBI report Crime in the United States 2000. We hope that the detailed information this Bulletin provides will help us to sustain the significant progress we have made in reducing juvenile violence.

Acknowledgments

This Bulletin was written by Howard N. Snyder, Ph.D., Director of Systems Research at the National Center for Juvenile Justice, with funds provided by OJJDP to support the National Juvenile Justice Data Analysis Project. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance provided by the FBI�s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, specifically, Maryvictoria Pyne and Ken Candell.