14 research outputs found
Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2014 National Report
Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2014
National Report is the fourth edition
of a comprehensive report on juvenile
crime, victimization, and the juvenile
justice system. The report consists of
the most requested information on juveniles
and the juvenile justice system
in the U.S. Developed by the National
Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ) for
the Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the
report draws on reliable data and relevant
research to provide a comprehensive
and insightful view of young
offenders and victims, and what happens
to those who enter the juvenile
justice system in the United States
Juvenile Court Statistics 2013
Juvenile Court Statistics 2013 describes delinquency cases handled between 1985 and 2013 and petitioned status offense cases handled between 1995 and 2013 by U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction. National estimates of juvenile court delinquency caseloads in 2013 were based on analyses of 749,722 automated case records and court-level statistics summarizing an additional 44,219 cases. Estimates of status offense cases formally processed by juvenile courts in 2013 were based on analyses of 75,411 automated case-level records and court-level summary statistics on an additional 4,820 cases. The data used in the analyses were contributed to the National Juvenile Court Data Archive (the Archive) by more than 2,400 courts with jurisdiction over 84% of the juvenile population in 2013
Formal System Processing of Juveniles: Effects on Delinquency
Justice practitioners have tremendous discretion on how to handle juvenile
offenders. Police officers, district attorneys, juvenile court intake officers, juvenile
and family court judges, and other officials can decide whether the juvenile should
be “officially processed” by the juvenile justice system, diverted from the system to a
program, counseling or some other services, or to do nothing at all (release the
juvenile altogether). An important policy question is which strategy leads to the best
outcomes for juveniles. This is an important question in the United States, but many
other nations are concerned with the decision to formally process or divert juvenile
offenders. There have been a number of randomized experiments in the juvenile
courts that have examined the impact of juvenile system processing that should be
gathered together in a systematic fashion to provide rigorous evidence about the
impact of this decision on subsequent offending by juveniles. Our objective is to answer the question: Does juvenile system processing reduce
subsequent delinquency? Based on the evidence presented in this report, juvenile system processing appears
to not have a crime control effect, and across all measures appears to increase
delinquency. This was true across measures of prevalence, incidence, severity, and
self-report. Given the additional financial costs associated with system processing
(especially when compared to doing nothing) and the lack of evidence for any public
safety benefit, jurisdictions should review their policies regarding the handling of
juveniles
Recrafting Youth Risk Assessment: Developing the Modified Positive Achievement Change Tool for Iowa
Risk assessments have become prevalent in the juvenile justice field. Many of these tools are adopted off-the-shelf and not adapted to fit the characteristics of a jurisdiction’s justice-involved youth. We examined the Positive Achievement Change Tool (PACT) in Iowa. Although used widely, the PACT is relatively unmodified. We updated the tool via item selection and weighting, gender-specific models and multiple outcomes, developing the Modified Positive Achievement Change Tool (M-PACT) for Iowa. We identified an average predictive accuracy increase of 7%. Evidence of reduced racial disparity was also observed, and research implications outline the need to customize assessments to improve predictive accuracy