Juvenile justice is primarily the domain of state and local authorities. Thus, juvenile courts’ jurisdiction and procedures can vary widely throughout the United States. For instance, depending upon the state and the alleged offense, the juvenile courts’ jurisdiction may end at age 18, 17, 16, or even younger. Referrals of youth to juvenile justice authorities can come from various sources, including police officers, parents, schools, and social service agencies. Police officers account for 41 percent of the referrals, according to 1989 Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) data. Generally, after an alleged status offender is referred to juvenile authorities, screening or intake staff (e.g., a juvenile probation officer) decide whether the case should be handled formally or informally. Juveniles can be temporarily placed in detention centers at some point between referral and case disposition by the court. If the intake decision were to proceed formally, a petition is drafted and filed to provide notice of the offenses that will be pursued. The petition charges the youth with a status-offense violation and identifies the youth and those other persons who should be informed of the proceedings. These proceedings include an adjudication hearing and possibly a disposition hearing. At the adjudication hearing, the juvenile court judge reviews evidence and determines if the youth has committed a status offense. At a concurrent or subsequent disposition hearing, the judge determines an appropriate action or treatment plan for the status offender. The juvenile court judge’s disposition options include dismissal of the case, probation, fine or restitution, community service, and placement. Placement refers to any “out-of-home” disposition, which usually takes place in residential facilities. These facilities provide 24-hour care to juveniles. The following are types of residential facilities: Detention centers: secure, residential facilities. Group homes: nonsecure facilities that are intended to provide a residential environment in which to meet the long-term counseling needs of troubled youth. Shelters: nonsecure facilities that are intended to provide overnight or short-term housing and crisis intervention counseling to troubled youth. Figure 1 shows the number of petitioned juvenile cases processed by the juvenile courts in 1991, according to OJJDP data. Cases handled informally usually do not involve a petition or an adjudication hearing. These informal (nonpetitioned) cases may be dismissed; possible reasons for dismissal include lack of evidence or the youth’s receiving a warning or counseling. Even when cases can be handled informally, juveniles can be given probation or even placed. As shown in figure 1, 2 percent (or 500) of all petitioned nonadjudicated cases in 1991 resulted in juveniles’ being placed. According to OJJDP, in many jurisdictions, most status-offense cases are handled informally. In many communities, county attorneys, family crisis units, or social service agencies—rather than the juvenile courts—have assumed responsibility for screening and diverting alleged status offenders from the juvenile justice system. Even though juvenile justice is primarily the responsibility of state and local authorities, Congress has taken an increased interest in juvenile justice issues during the past two decades. Most significantly, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, as amended (42 U.S.C. 5601 et seq. ), established a formula grant program for states to improve their juvenile justice systems. States receive formula grant funds if they comply with certain requirements. One of these requirements was that status offenders should not be held in secure detention facilities, such as jails, police lockups, juvenile detention centers, or training schools. In 1980, Congress amended the law to allow states to detain status offenders under certain conditions and still receive their grant funds. According to OJJDP regulations, these status offenders must be provided certain procedural protections. Some child advocacy groups have raised concerns about the lack of appropriate placement services for females in the juvenile justice system. For example, in September 1992, the National Network for Runaway and Homeless Youth Services advocated the need to review gender bias within the states’ juvenile justice systems. In addition, some studies have indicated that females were more likely to be detained for status offenses than males. To aid us in defining gender bias and in designing models or approaches to address the objectives, we reviewed relevant literature identified in bibliographies provided us by NCJJ and OJJDP. Regarding the first objective, we used NCJJ’s national estimates of status-offender data for calendar years 1986 through 1991 to develop gender-specific probabilities of detentions, adjudications, and placements for status offenders by offense categories. However, these data did not contain sufficient information relevant to judges’ decisions to assess gender bias, e.g., prior offense history and source of referral for the offense. To examine gender bias, we did further analysis using data from several states that had additional variables beyond those used for NCJJ’s national estimates. We developed 6 models to study the outcome of intake decisions in 6 states and 19 models to further study detentions, adjudications, and placements in 7 states. We used a class of models commonly used in criminological research to analyze these types of outcomes. We used NCJJ’s state-specific data files to conduct regression analyses for seven states—Arizona, California, Florida, Missouri, Nebraska, South Carolina, and Utah. Data limitations precluded us from developing models for status offender intake decisions in Nebraska, placements in Arizona, and detentions in Utah. Further, we could not address possible gender bias elsewhere in the juvenile justice system because data did not exist. For example, the data did not include youths who were handled informally—picked up, counseled, and/or released by the police or by county juvenile department intake officials. To compare the availability of facilities and services, we visited a total of 15 facilities located in 9 counties—generally 2 counties (a rural county and an urban county) within each of 4 selected states (Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, and Texas). We mailed a survey to a national sample of county probation department officials to obtain (1) opinions on differences in the juvenile justice systems’ processing of status offenders and (2) perspectives on the availability of facilities and services for status offenders. By using a national sample, we were able to project the results to our study population of 1,249 chief juvenile justice probation officers. Appendix I presents more details about our objectives, scope, and methodology, including a discussion of how we selected states for analysis with respect to our second objective. Appendix V contains a copy of the survey and the survey’s results. We did our work from March 1993 through August 1994 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Since no federal agency has responsibility for the issues discussed in this report, we did not obtain official comments on a draft of this report. However, we did discuss our results with NCJJ and OJJDP officials and, where appropriate, incorporated their comments. Our analyses of 6 years of national data indicated that there were only relatively small differences in the percentages of female and male status offenders detained, adjudicated, and placed. With six exceptions, our logistic regression analyses of intake decisions, detentions, adjudications, and placements in seven states generally did not indicate any significant gender-based differences in the processing of female and male status offenders. In addition, our national survey of county probation officers and site visits did not identify any specific gender differences in juvenile justice systems. According to NCJJ national data, a total of 500,620 status-offender cases were petitioned to juvenile courts during calendar years 1986 through 1991. Of the total petitioned status-offender cases, 41.3 percent (206,756 cases) involved females and 58.7 percent (293,864 cases) involved males. In terms of gender distinctions, two specific offense categories had noticeable differences in the numbers: females were involved in 61.9 percent of the running away offenses and males were involved in 74.3 percent of the liquor offenses. Table 1 shows that petitioned female status offenders had about the same probability, or percent chance, as petitioned male status offenders of being detained, adjudicated, or placed out-of-home during 1986 through 1991, for 60 percent of the outcomes. For example, the probabilities for female and male truants who were detained, adjudicated, or placed were within 2 percentage points of each other. The exceptions were in the offense categories of running away and liquor violations. For the offense categories of liquor violation, running away, truancy, and ungovernability, our data analysis showed that the probabilities of either female or male status offenders’ being detained before disposition by the juvenile courts had declined from calendar years 1986 to 1991. For example, the probability of ungovernable female status offenders’ being detained decreased from about 19 percent to 8 percent, and the decrease for males was from 19 percent to 9 percent (see app. II, table II.3). Regarding running away, our analyses showed that males had higher probabilities than females of being detained, adjudicated, or placed. Further, males with liquor offenses had higher probabilities of being adjudicated or placed than females. Appendix II provides more detailed analyses of NCJJ national data. The national estimates did not enable us to determine whether gender bias occurred in the outcomes because these data did not contain variables that are likely to be relevant to judges’ decisions (e.g., prior offense histories). Accordingly, we developed statistical models to measure gender bias using data sets that contained appropriate variables. To analyze gender bias, we developed logistic regression models of the intake decisions for six of the seven states and the detention, adjudication, and placement decisions for seven states. Overall, the 25 models involved applications of the logistic regression procedure. That is, each state’s models contained variables that measured characteristics that may be associated with the juvenile judicial system outcomes and estimated how the characteristics influenced outcomes.