Sex

Judicial Decision and Disposition
Juvenile court handling of petitioned status offense cases varied little across sex (figure 21). Approximately half of formally handled status offense cases involving males were adjudicated (51%). For females, the proportion of cases adjudicated was 49%. The likelihood of adjudication for males and females differed only slightly within each of the four major status offense categories (table 74). The probability of adjudication for formal status offense cases declined between 1986 and 1995 for both males and females.

Once adjudicated, the likelihood of out-of-home placement for petitioned status offense cases was the same (16%) for males and females in 1995 (table 75). The likelihood of out-of-home placement declined between 1986 and 1995 for both males and females. For ungovernability cases involving males, the probability of out-of-home placement decreased from 34% in 1986 to 26% in 1995. The proportion of runaway cases involving females placed out of the home declined from 33% to 25% during the same time period.

For both males and females, the proportion of status offense cases resulting in formal probation was smaller in 1995 than in 1986 (table 76). For adjudicated cases involving females, the use of probation decreased from 63% to 59%; for males the change was from 57% to 55%. For both sexes, cases involving status liquor law violations showed the opposite pattern, liquor law violation cases were more likely to result in formal orders of probation in 1995 than in 1986.