MENU TITLE: Juvenile Court Statistics 1993: Acknowledgements, Table of Contents, Preface, and.
Introduction 
Series: OJJDP
Published: June 1996
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Juvenile Court Statistics 1993

JEFFREY A. BUTTS
HOWARD N. SNYDER 
TERRENCE A. FINNEGAN 
ANNE L. AUGHENBAUGH 
ROWEN S. POOLE 

------------------------------

This report was prepared by the National Center for
Juvenile Justice, the research division of the
National Council of Juvenile and Family Court
Judges, and was supported by grant number #95-JN-
FX-0008 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs
(OJP), U.S. Department of Justice.

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

The current edition of the OJP Financial and
Administrative Guide for Grants (OJP M 7100.1D)
provides guidance on allowable printing activities.

Copyright 1995, National Center for Juvenile
Justice, 710 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA
15219-3000 412-227-6950. ISSN No. 0091B3278

Suggested citation: Butts, Jeffrey A., Snyder,
Howard N., Finnegan, Terrence A., Aughenbaugh, Anne
L., and Poole, Rowen S. (1996) Juvenile Court
Statistics 1993. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

------------------------------

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This report is a product of the National Juvenile
Court Data Archive, which is funded by grants to
the National Center for Juvenile Justice from the
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention (OJJDP), U.S. Department of Justice.
Joseph Moone is the OJJDP Program Manager for the
project. 

The entire staff of the National Juvenile Court
Data Archive are collectively responsible for the
creation and production of this report: 

Anne L. Aughenbaugh, Manager of Data Collection 
Jeffrey A. Butts, Ph.D., Project Manager 
Terrence A. Finnegan, Senior Computer Programmer 
Sheila Loyacona, Research Assistant Intern
Eileen Poe-Yamagata, Research Assistant 
Rowen S. Poole, Computer Programmer 
Angela L. Sanders, Research Assistant Intern 
Melissa Sickmund, Ph.D., Senior Research Analyst 
Howard N. Snyder, Ph.D., Project Director 
Dennis P. Sullivan, Data Analyst 
Nancy Tierney, Administrative Assistant 

Advisers to the Archive are Linda Bender,
Pennsylvania Center for Juvenile Justice Training
and Research; Alfred Blumstein, Carnegie Mellon
University; Carol Burgess, Maricopa County Juvenile
Court; David Farrington, Cambridge University;
Daniel Kasprzyk, National Center for Education
Statistics; and Malcolm Klein, University of
Southern California. Their support and involvement
are deeply appreciated. 

Juvenile Court Statistics would not be possible
were it not for the State and local agencies that
take the time each year to honor our requests for
data and documentation. The following agencies
contributed case-level data or court-level
aggregate statistics for this report: 

Alabama -- Alabama Department of Youth Services.

Alaska -- Alaska Court System.

Arizona -- Supreme Court of Arizona and the
Maricopa County Juvenile Court Center.

Arkansas -- Administrative Office of the Courts.

California -- Judicial Council of California and
the following county probation departments:
Alameda, Kings, Los Angeles, Marin, Orange, San
Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, San Joaquin,
Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Stanislaus,
and Ventura.

Colorado -- Colorado Judicial Department.

Connecticut -- Chief Court Administrator's Office.

Delaware -- Family Court of the State of Delaware.

District of Columbia -- District of Columbia
Superior Court.

Florida -- Department of Juvenile Justice, Bureau
of Research and Data.

Georgia -- Administrative Office of the Courts.

Hawaii -- The Judiciary, Administrative Office of
the Courts.

Idaho -- Administrative Office of the Courts.

Illinois -- Administrative Office of the Illinois
Courts, Probation Division, and the Circuit Court
of Cook County, Juvenile Division.

Indiana -- Division of State Court Administration.

Iowa -- State Court Administrator.

Kansas -- Office of Judicial Administration.

Kentucky -- Kentucky Administrative Office of the
Courts.

Louisiana -- Judicial Council of the Supreme Court
of Louisiana.

Maine -- Administrative Office of the Courts.

Maryland -- Department of Juvenile Justice.

Massachusetts -- Administrative Office of the
Courts.

Michigan -- State Court Administrative Office.

Minnesota -- Minnesota Supreme Court Information
System.

Mississippi -- Mississippi Department of Human
Services, Division of Youth Services.

Missouri -- Department of Social Services, Division
of Children and Youth Services.

Montana -- Board of Crime Control and the Office of
Court Administration.

Nebraska -- Nebraska Crime Commission.

New Hampshire -- Administrative Office of the
Courts.

New Jersey -- Administrative Office of the Courts.

New Mexico -- Administrative Office of the Courts
and Children, Youth and Families Department.

New York -- Office of Court Administration and the
State of New York, Division of Probation and
Correctional Alternatives.

North Carolina -- Administrative Office of the
Courts.

North Dakota -- Supreme Court, Office of State
Court Administrator.

Ohio -- Supreme Court of Ohio and the Cuyahoga
County Juvenile Court Division.

Oregon -- Judicial Department.

Pennsylvania -- Juvenile Court Judges' Commission.

Rhode Island -- Administrative Office of State
Courts and Rhode Island Family Court.

South Carolina -- Department of Juvenile Justice.

South Dakota -- State Court Administrator's Office.

Tennessee -- Tennessee Council of Juvenile and
Family Court Judges and the Juvenile Court of
Memphis and Shelby County.

Texas -- Texas Juvenile Probation Commission.

Utah -- Utah State Juvenile Court.

Vermont -- Supreme Court of Vermont, Office of the
Court Administrator.

Virginia -- State Administrative Office and
Department of Family and Youth Services.

Washington -- Office of the Administrator for the
Courts.

West Virginia -- Juvenile Justice Committee, West
Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.

Wisconsin -- Supreme Court of Wisconsin.

Wyoming -- Supreme Court of Wyoming, Court
Coordinator's Office.

------------------------------

TABLE OF CONTENTS


Foreword

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

National Estimates of Delinquency Cases

National Estimates of Petitioned Status Offense
Cases

Methods

Glossary of Terms

Appendix: Reported Juvenile Court Cases Disposed in
1993 by County    

------------------------------

PREFACE

This is the 67th report in the Juvenile Court
Statistics series. It describes the delinquency and
status offense cases handled by U.S.juvenile courts
between 1989 and 1993. National estimates of
juvenile court caseloads in 1993 were based on
analyses of approximately 690,000 automated case
records contributed to the National Juvenile Court
Data Archive by nearly 1,400 courts with juvenile
jurisdiction and analyses of court-level summary
statistics supplied by more than 400 additional
courts. Altogether, the courts contributing data
for this report had jurisdiction over 67% of the
juvenile population in 1993.

The first Juvenile Court Statistics report was
published in 1929 by the U.S. Department of Labor
and described cases handled by 42 courts during
1927. During the next decade, Juvenile Court
Statistics reports were based on statistical cards
filled out for each delinquency, status offense,
and dependency case handled by the courts
participating in the reporting series. The
Children's Bureau (within the Department of Labor)
tabulated the information on each card, including
the age, sex, and race of the youth; the reason for
referral; the manner of dealing with the case; and
the final disposition of the case. During the
1940's, however, the collection of case-level data
was abandoned due to its high cost. From the 1940's
until the mid-1970's, Juvenile Court Statistics
reports were based on the simple, annual case
counts reported to the Children's Bureau by
participating courts. 

In 1957 the Children's Bureau initiated a new data
collection design that enabled the Juvenile Court
Statistics series to develop statistically sound,
national estimates. The Children's Bureau, which
had been transferred to the Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare (HEW), developed a
probability sample of more than 500 courts and
asked each court in the sample to submit annual
counts of delinquency, status offense, and
dependency cases. Soon, however, this design proved
difficult to sustain because some of the courts
began to drop out of the sample. At the same time,
a growing number of courts outside the sample began
to compile comparable statistics. By the late
1960's, HEW ended the sample-based effort and
returned to the policy of collecting annual case
counts from any court able to provide them.
However, the series continued to generate national
estimates using data from these nonprobability
samples. 

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention (OJJDP) assumed responsibility for
Juvenile Court Statistics following the passage of
the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act
of 1974. The National Center for Juvenile Justice
(NCJJ) was awarded a grant in 1975 to continue the
report series. Although agreeing to continue the
procedures established by HEW in order to ensure
reporting continuity, NCJJ also began to
investigate methods of improving the quality and
detail of national statistics. A critical
innovation was made possible by the proliferation
of computers during the 1970's. As NCJJ wrote to
agencies across the country asking them to complete
the annual juvenile court statistics form, some
agencies offered to send the automated case-level
data collected by their management information
systems. Over a period of years, NCJJ learned to
combine these automated records to produce a
detailed national portrait of juvenile court
activity -- the original objective of the Juvenile
Court Statistics series.

The project's transition from using annual case
counts to analyzing automated case-level data was
completed with the production of Juvenile Court
Statistics 1984. For the first time since the
1930's, Juvenile Court Statistics contained
detailed, case-level descriptions of the
delinquency and status offense cases handled by
U.S. juvenile courts. This case-level detail would
continue to be the emphasis of the reporting series
throughout the next decade. Thus, the content of
Juvenile Court Statistics was once again consistent
with the goals established by those who began this
work more than 60 years earlier. 

DATA ACCESS 

The data used in this report are stored in the
National Juvenile Court Data Archive at NCJJ in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Archive contains the
most detailed information available on youth
involved in the juvenile justice system and on the
activities of U.S. juvenile courts. Designed to
facilitate research on the juvenile justice system,
the Archive's data files are available to
policymakers, researchers, and students. In
addition to national data files, State and local
data can be provided to researchers. With the
assistance of Archive staff, selected files can be
merged for cross-jurisdictional and longitudinal
analyses. Upon request, project staff are also
available to perform special analyses of the
Archive's data files. Researchers are encouraged to
contact the Archive directly in order to explore
the possible uses of Archive data files for their
work.

------------------------------

INTRODUCTION

This report describes delinquency and status
offense cases handled by U.S. courts with juvenile
jurisdiction between 1989 and 1993. Courts with
juvenile jurisdiction may handle a variety of
matters, including child abuse and neglect, traffic
violations, child support, and adoptions. This
report focuses on cases involving juveniles charged
with law violations (delinquency or status
offenses). 

UNIT OF COUNT 

In measuring the activity of juvenile courts, one
could count the number of offenses referred; the
number of cases referred; actual filings of
offenses, cases, or petitions; the number of
disposition hearings; or the number of youth
handled. Each "unit of count" has its own merits
and disadvantages. The unit of count used in
Juvenile Court Statistics (JCS) is the number of
"cases disposed."

A "case" represents a youth processed by a juvenile
court on a new referral regardless of the number of
law violations contained in the referral. A youth
charged with four burglaries in a single referral
would represent a single case. A youth referred for
three burglaries and referred again the following
week on another burglary charge would represent two
cases, even if the court eventually merged the two
referrals for more efficient processing. 

The fact that a case is "disposed" means that a
definite action was taken as the result of the
referral -- i.e., a plan of treatment was selected
or initiated. It does not mean a case was
necessarily closed or terminated in the sense that
all contact between the court and the youth ceased.
For example, a case is considered to be disposed
when the court orders probation, not when a term of
probation supervision is completed. 

COVERAGE

A basic question for this reporting series is what
constitutes a referral to juvenile court. The
answer depends in part on how each jurisdiction
organizes its case screening function. In many
communities all juvenile matters are first screened
by an intake unit within the juvenile court. The
intake unit determines whether the matter should be
handled informally (i.e., diverted) or petitioned
for formal handling. In data files from communities
using this type of system, a delinquency or status
offense case is defined as a court referral at the
point of initial screening, regardless of whether
it is handled formally or informally. 

In other communities the juvenile court is not
involved in delinquency or status offense matters
until another agency (e.g., the prosecutor's office
or a social service agency) has first screened the
case. In other words, the intake function is
performed outside the court, where some matters are
diverted to other agencies without the court ever
handling them. Status offense cases, in particular,
tend to be diverted from court processing in this
manner. 

Since its inception, Juvenile Court Statistics has
adapted to the changing structure of juvenile court
processing nationwide. As court processing became
more diverse, the reporting series broadened its
definition of the juvenile court to incorporate
other agencies that perform what can generically be
considered juvenile court functions. In some
communities data collection has expanded to include
departments of youth services, child welfare
agencies, and prosecutors' offices. In other
communities, this expansion has not been possible.
Therefore, while there is complete coverage of
formally handled delinquency and status offense
cases and adequate coverage of informally handled
delinquency cases in this reporting series, the
coverage of informally handled status offense cases
is not sufficient to support the generation of
national estimates. For this reason, JCS reports do
not present national estimates of informally
handled status offense cases. (Subnational analyses
of these cases are available from the Archive.)

JUVENILE COURT PROCESSING

Any attempt to describe juvenile court caseloads at
the national level must devise a generic model of
court processing to serve as a common framework. In
order to analyze and present data about juvenile
court activities in diverse jurisdictions, the
Archive strives to fit the processing
characteristics of all jurisdictions into the
following general model:

Intake. Referred cases are first screened by an
intake department (either within or outside the
court). The intake department may decide to dismiss
the case for lack of legal sufficiency or to
resolve the matter formally or informally. Informal
(i.e., nonpetitioned) dispositions may include a
voluntary referral to a social agency for services,
informal probation, or the payment of fines or some
form of voluntary restitution. 

Transfer. The intake department may decide that a
case should be removed from juvenile court and
handled instead in criminal (adult) court. In such
cases a petition is usually filed in juvenile court
asking the juvenile court judge to waive
jurisdiction over the case. The juvenile court
judge decides whether the case merits criminal
prosecution.[1] When a transfer request is denied,
the matter is usually scheduled for an adjudicatory
hearing in the juvenile court.  

Petitioning. If the intake department decides that
a case should be handled formally within the
juvenile court, a petition is filed, and the case
is placed on the court calendar (or docket) for an
adjudicatory hearing. A small number of petitions
is dismissed for various reasons before the
adjudicatory hearing is actually held. 

Adjudication. At the adjudicatory hearing, a youth
may be adjudicated (judged) a delinquent or status
offender, and the case would then proceed to a
disposition hearing. Alternatively, a case can be
dismissed or continued in contemplation of
dismissal. In these cases, the court often
recommends that the youth take some actions prior
to the final adjudication decision, such as paying
restitution or voluntarily attending drug
counseling. 

Disposition. At the disposition hearing, the
juvenile court judge determines the most
appropriate sanction, generally after reviewing a
predisposition report prepared by a probation
department. The range of options available to a
court typically includes commitment to an
institution; placement in a group or foster home or
other residential facility; probation (either
regular or intensive supervision); referral to an
outside agency, day treatment, or mental health
program; or imposition of a fine, community
service, or restitution order. 

Detention. A youth may be placed in a detention
facility at different points as a case progresses
through the juvenile justice system. Detention
practices also vary from jurisdiction to
jurisdiction. A judicial decision to detain or
continue detention may occur before or after
adjudication or disposition. This report includes
only those detention actions that result in a youth
being placed in a restrictive facility under court
authority while awaiting the outcome of the court
process. This report does not include detention
decisions made by law enforcement officials prior
to court intake or those occurring after the
disposition of a case (e.g., temporary holding of a
youth in a detention facility while awaiting
availability of a court-ordered placement). 

DATA QUALITY

Juvenile Court Statistics relies on the secondary
analysis of data originally compiled by juvenile
courts or juvenile justice agencies to meet their
own information and reporting needs. As a
consequence, incoming data files are not uniform
across jurisdictions. However, these data files are
likely to be more detailed and accurate than data
files compiled by local jurisdictions merely to
comply with a mandated national reporting program. 

The heterogeneity of the contributed data files
greatly increases the complexity of the Archive's
data processing tasks. Contributing jurisdictions
collect and report information using their own
definitions and coding categories. Consequently,
the detail reported in some data sets is not
contained in others. Even when similar data
elements are used, they may have inconsistent
definitions or overlapping coding categories. The
Archive restructures contributed data into
standardized coding categories in order to combine
information from multiple sources. The
standardization process requires an intimate
understanding of the development, structure, and
content of each data set received. Codebooks and
operation manuals are studied, data suppliers
interviewed, and data files analyzed to maximize
the understanding of each information system. Every
attempt is made to ensure that only compatible
information from the various data sets is used in
standardized data files. 

While the heterogeneity of the data adds complexity
to the development of a national data file, it has
proven to be valuable in other applications. The
diversity of the data stored in the National
Juvenile Court Data Archive enables the data to
support a wider range of research efforts than
would a uniform, and probably more general, data
collection form. For example, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting Program
(UCR) is limited by necessity to a small number of
relatively broad offense codes. The UCR offense
coding for larceny-theft combines shoplifting with
a number of other larcenies. Thus, the data are
useless for studies of shoplifting. In comparison,
many of the Archive's data sets are sufficiently
detailed to enable a researcher to distinguish
offenses that are often combined in other reporting
series -- shoplifting can be distinguished from
other larcenies, joy-riding from motor vehicle
theft, and armed robbery from unarmed robbery. The
diversity of these coding structures allows
researchers to construct data sets that contain the
detail demanded by their research designs.

VALIDITY OF THE ESTIMATES

The national estimates presented in this report
were generated with data from a large
nonprobability sample of juvenile courts.
Consequently, statistical confidence in the
estimates cannot be mathematically determined.
Although statistical confidence would be greater if
a probability sampling design were used, the cost
of such an effort has long been considered
prohibitive. Secondary analysis of available data
is the best practical alternative for developing an
understanding of the Nation's juvenile courts.[2]

National estimates for 1993 are based on analyses
of individual case records from nearly 1,400 courts
with jurisdiction over half of the U.S. juvenile
population. The weighting procedures that generate
national estimates from this sample control for
many factors: the size of a community; the
demographic composition of its youth population;
the volume of cases referred to the reporting
courts; the age, sex, and race of the youth
involved; offense characteristics of the cases; the
court's response to the cases (manner of handling,
detention, adjudication, and disposition); and the
nature of each court's jurisdictional
responsibilities (i.e., upper age of original
jurisdiction). 

The accuracy of the Archive's national estimates
can be assessed by comparing them with estimates
developed by other national data systems. For
example, each JCS report provides an estimate of
the number of referrals that juvenile courts
received from law enforcement. On the other hand,
the FBI's Crime in the United States reports
provide the number of cases that law enforcement
agencies referred to juvenile courts each year. FBI
data are from the UCR series and are collected from
a nonprobability sample of police agencies. For the
past decade, referral trends reported in UCR and
JCS data have been parallel. From 1985 to 1992, the
overall difference between the number of referrals
estimated from UCR and JCS data was just 7%, a
finding that supports the validity of both
estimates. 

STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT

This report describes the delinquency and status
offense cases handled by juvenile courts between
1989 and 1993. First, the report presents national
estimates of petitioned and nonpetitioned
delinquency cases handled by courts with juvenile
jurisdiction. Next, national estimates of
petitioned (formally processed) status offense
cases are presented. Together, these sections
provide a detailed national portrait of juvenile
court cases, including the offenses involved,
sources of referral, detention practices, and
dispositions ordered. 

A brief description of the statistical procedure
used to generate these estimates can be found in
the Methods section. For readers wishing to know
more about the estimation procedure, a companion
volume to this report, Detailed Supplement to
Juvenile Court Statistics 1993, is available upon
request from the Archive. 

Readers are encouraged to consult the Glossary of
Terms for definitions of key terms used throughout
the report. Few terms in the field of juvenile
justice have widely accepted definitions. The
terminology used in this report has been carefully
developed to communicate the findings of the work
as precisely as possible without sacrificing their
applicability to multiple jurisdictions.
 
Finally, the appendix presents a complete list of
the number of delinquency, status offense, and
dependency cases handled by juvenile courts in
1993. Footnotes indicate the source of the data and
the unit of count. Because courts report their
statistical data using various units of count
(e.g., cases disposed, offenses referred,
petitions), the reader is cautioned against making
cross-jurisdictional comparisons before studying
the accompanying footnotes. 

OTHER SOURCES OF JUVENILE COURT DATA

JCS reports prior to 1992 contained a series of
tables presenting national estimates for the 5
individual years of report coverage and detailed
current year data, as well as tables containing
subnational, nonestimated data analyses on specific
offenses. These tables are no longer included in
Juvenile Court Statistics but may be obtained in
the Detailed Supplement to Juvenile Court
Statistics 1993, which is available directly from
NCJJ.

The national delinquency estimates presented in
this report are also available in an easy-to-use
software package, Easy Access to Juvenile Court
Statistics 1989-1993. With the support of the
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention, NCJJ distributes this package to
facilitate independent analysis of Archive data
while eliminating the need for statistical analysis
software. All necessary data files as well as the
NCJJ software are available on a single 3-inch
diskette that can be easily installed on an IBM-
compatible personal computer or network. To order a
complimentary copy of Easy Access to Juvenile Court
Statistics 1989-1993, contact the National Center
for Juvenile Justice at 412-227-6950. 

------------------------------

NOTES

1. Mechanisms of transfer to criminal court vary by
State. In some States a prosecutor has the
authority to file juvenile cases that meet
specified criteria directly in criminal court. This
report, however, includes only cases that were
transferred as a result of judicial waiver.

2. For more detailed analyses of the JCS national
estimates and their accuracy, see: Jeffrey A. Butts
and Howard N. Snyder. 1995. A Study to Assess the
Validity of the National Estimates Developed for
the Juvenile Court Statistics Series. Pittsburgh,
PA: National Center for Juvenile Justice.