Delinquency Cases Waived to Criminal Court, 2018

• NCJ Number: 255114
• Date Published: January 2021
• Author(s): Sarah Hockenberry
• Agencies: OJJDP, NIJ
• Publication Series: OJJDP National Report Series

Annotation

This fact sheet presents national estimates of cases waived by juvenile court judges to be handled by criminal courts from 1985 through 2018.

Abstract

This fact sheet is based on the OJJDP-sponsored report, Juvenile Court Statistics 2018, and was developed with support from NIJ. It presents national estimates of cases waived by juvenile court judges to be handled by criminal courts from 1985 through 2018. In 2018, juvenile courts in the United States handled 744,500 delinquency cases. In more than half (57 percent) of these cases, petitions were filed requesting an adjudication or waiver hearing. Of the petitioned cases, approximately 1 percent were waived. Juvenile courts waived an estimated 3,600 delinquency cases to criminal court in 2018. Between 1993 and 2018, petitioned person offense cases were more likely to be judicially waived than petitioned cases involving other offenses.