Juvenile Crime Statistics

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Juvenile Crime Statistics Juvenile Crime Statistics In 2008, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) of the Justice department put out a bulletin called Juvenile Justice Bulletin. This consisted of data submitted by the nation’s law enforcement agencies to the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) of the FBI. With this data of arrests during the given year, the UCR was able to calculate percentages of multiple sub- previous years. After reading this Bulletin, I feel the success desired is somewhat of a moot point. The data of this Bulletin is too congested. There are categories with sub-categories, and those sub-categories have sub-categories i.e., percentages of murder victims under the age of 15 and 13 and 5, percentages of victims killed with firearms, percentages of loiterers, runaways, those ignoring curfews. How can a clear understanding of the status of juvenile delinquency of 2008 be easily achieved by “john q public” or, for that matter, law enforcement? In other words, the Bulletin is not reader-friendly. Also, without the inclusion of rehabilitation programs offered in 2008 with their successes and failures, the reader sees only part of the “big picture”. It would be interesting to know the percentage of recidivism for delinquents attending these programs, such as anger management and violence prevention classes while incarcerated or not. By including data concerning available rehab programs, the reader, whether law enforcement or the private citizen, can gain knowledge about the rehabilitation this country offers and the degree of success. The article indicates that juvenile arrests, as a whole, were fewer in 2008 than in 2007. Burglary arrests were slightly higher 2007 and 2008, but remained markedly less than in the 90’s. Larceny (mainly shoplifting), auto thefts and arson went down slightly. Why aren’t

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