Juvenile Offenders and Victims

Law Enforcement & Juvenile Crime

For most delinquents, law enforcement is the doorway to the juvenile justice system. Once a juvenile is apprehended for a law violation, it is the police officer who first determines if the juvenile will move deeper into the justice system or will be diverted.

Law enforcement agencies track the volume and characteristics of crimes reported to them and use this information to monitor the changing levels of crime in their communities. Not all crimes are reported to law enforcement, and many of those that are reported remain unsolved. Law enforcement's incident-based reporting systems include victim reports of offender characteristics in crimes in which the victim sees the offender. For these crimes, even when there is no arrest, law enforcement records can be used to develop an understanding of juvenile offending. For all other types of crimes, an understanding of juvenile involvement comes through the study of arrest statistics. Arrest statistics can monitor the flow of juveniles and adults into the justice system and are the most frequently cited source of information on juvenile crime trends.

This chapter describes the volume and characteristics of juvenile crime from law enforcement's perspective. It presents information on the number and offense characteristics of juvenile arrests in 2010 and historical trends in juvenile arrests. This chapter also examines arrests and arrest trends for female juvenile offenders and offenders under age 13 and compares arrest trends for males and females and different racial groups. It includes arrest rate trends for many specific offenses, including murder and other violent crimes, property crimes, and drug and weapons offenses. The majority of data presented in this chapter were originally compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of its Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which includes the Supplementary Homicide Reports and the National Incidence-Based Reporting System. Arrest estimates were developed from these data by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.