DOI: 10.3886/icpsr38916.v1
title: Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement, 2021 [United States]
title: Version 1

description: The Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP), conducted
every other year, asks juvenile residential custody facilities in the United States to describe all youth assigned a bed in the facility on a specified
reference date. In 2021, the reference date was Wednesday, October 27 (the fourth Wednesday in October).
Each record in the data provides information on a juvenile in a residential
facility on the reference date, including information on placement (e.g.
placing agency), the judicial process (e.g. court adjudication status), and
demographics (e.g. age). Each record that provides information about
a juvenile also includes information about institutional characteristics
(e.g. facility type, use of locked doors or gates), treatment services, and
population of the facility in which the juvenile was held. Therefore, CJRP
data can be analyzed at the individual or facility level.
The census was not sent to adult facilities or to facilities exclusively for
drug or mental health treatment or for abused or neglected children.
Some state and regional agencies provide CJRP data for more than one
facility under their jurisdiction.
description: The purpose of the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP) is to provide a detailed understanding of juveniles in custody across the United States. The CJRP offers information about youth under 21 detained in or committed to residential facilities across the United States, including demographics, placement and adjudication status, and characteristics of the facilities themselves.
The CJRP was administered for the first time in 1997 by the United States Bureau of the Census for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). The CJRP replaced the Census of Public and Private Juvenile Detention, Correctional, and Shelter Facilities, also known as the Children in Custody (CIC) census, which had been conducted since the early 1970s. The CJRP differs fundamentally from the CIC in that the CIC collected aggregate data on juveniles held in each facility (e.g., number of juveniles in the facility) and the CJRP collects an individual record on each juvenile held in the residential facility (e.g. sex, race, most serious offense) to provide a more detailed picture of juveniles in custody.
description: The CJRP is designed to provide one-day population counts for youth in all facilities meeting certain inclusion (see "Sampling" below). The survey has two sections, the first collecting facility-level data and the second collecting individual-level data about all youth residing in the facility as of the reference date (generally the fourth Wednesday in October).
The CJRP is administered by the United States Bureau of the Census for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Facility representatives receive mail questionnaires shortly before the survey reference date; beginning with the 2010 CJRP, an online version of the survey is also available. A small number of facilities meeting census inclusion criteria decline to complete sections of the survey or fail to return the census forms after repeated notification and phone contact from Census Bureau personnel; these facilities are designated non-respondents. Other facilities may be unable to provide all the information necessary to complete the survey. In cases where facilities are unable or unwilling to complete all survey items, the Census Bureau uses complete records to impute missing data.
description: The 2021 CJRP (n=26,131; 368 variables) collects information on both youth in residential facilities and the facilities themselves.
Section I of the survey form collects facility data, including:

location (state),
organizational information (facility owner, operator, and agency affiliation)
facility type (e.g. detention center, group home/halfway house, runaway and homeless shelter),
treatment provided (e.g. mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment)
security features (e.g. locked internal or external doors or gates), and
number of persons assigned beds in relation to age and offense status (total, under 21, 21 or older, assigned a bed because of an offense, assigned a bed for other reasons).

Section IA of the survey collects COVID data from facilities, including:

number of tests conducted
number of positive tests for juveniles, staff, and residents
whether individuals were quarantined and how many were quarantined
whether vaccines were administered and how many were administered

Section II collects individual data, including:

demographic variables (race, sex, age),
placement variables (category and level of the placing agency, length of stay), and
variables related to the judicial process (most serious offense charged, state or territory in which the offense was committed, court adjudication status).

The CJRP dataset also includes Census Bureau variables indicating whether a response to a given item was imputed or not.
description: Response Rates: 85.9%
description: The CJRP is a census. Facility inclusion criteria were as follows:

residential facilities in operation on the census reference date (generally the fourth Wednesday in October),
public or private (or, since 1999, tribal) operation, and
intended for juvenile offenders (although some hold adults as well).

Specifically excluded were: nonresidential facilities, detention centers operated as part of adult jails, facilities exclusively for drug or mental health treatment or dependent/neglected youth, foster homes, and federal correctional facilities (e.g. Immigration and Naturalization Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, United States Marshals, or Bureau of Prisons).
Inclusion criteria for individuals were as follows:

youth under age 21,
assigned a bed in a residential facility at the end of the day on the census reference day,
charged with an offense or court-adjudicated for an offense, and
in residential placement because of that offense.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement, 2021 [United States]
description: Individuals in the United States under age 21, charged with or court-adjudicated for an offense, and held in juvenile residential facilities on the fourth Wednesday in October of 2021. Smallest Geographic Unit: State
description: mail questionnaire; web-based surveySection IA COVID Addendum was added to the 2021 questionnaire. This section includes 62 variables in the dataset.Additional information about the CJRP and other national juvenile corrections data collections sponsored by OJJDP is available from the National Juvenile Corrections Data Resource Guide.Individual years of data from the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP) and the Juvenile Residential Facility Census (JRFC), a complement to the CJRP data, are available through enclave (on-site) access. Users interested in utilizing the enclave data must complete an Application for Use of the ICPSR Data Enclave. Additional data in the CJRP Series, JRFC Series, and the Matched CJRP/JRFC Series are available through the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data's Restricted Survey Documentation and Analysis (RSDA) system. Users interested in accessing these data through NACJD's RSDA system can apply online for access via the ICPSR restricted data contract portal which can be accessed from the study homepage.The CJRP reference date has generally been the fourth Wednesday in October. However, the 1997 CJRP reference date was October 29, 1997, which was the fifth Wednesday of the month. Additionally, a set of unforeseen circumstances prevented the 2005 and 2009 mailouts from taking place in October of each year. The census date for these collections was postponed until the following February.The 2010 CJRP was the first cycle to attempt to collect data from facilities in American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. There are no data in the 2021 CJRP for American Samoa or Guam.Missing data were imputed for all facilities and offender records with the exception of territorial and tribal facilities.