This report describes delinquency and status offense cases handled between 2005 and 2018 by U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction.
Courts with juvenile jurisdiction may handle a variety of matters, including child maltreatment, traffic violations, child support, and adoptions. This report focuses on cases that involve juveniles charged with law violations (delinquency or status offenses), drawing on data from the National Juvenile Court Data Archive, funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and managed by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). National estimates of juvenile court delinquency caseloads in 2018 were based on analyses of 539,646 automated case records and court-level statistics summarizing an additional 55,566 cases.