Juvenile Intakes
Juvenile intakes -- incidents in which a juvenile is alleged to have broken the law -- are difficult to compare across regions because of differences in legal policy and types of behavior. Virginia's intake rate is well below the national average for juvenile arrests for property and violent crimes.
Why is This Important?
Juvenile intakes provide a measure of problem behaviors among adolescents in a community, but intakes should not be interpreted as equaling the amount or seriousness of juvenile crime.
Intake data includes all offenses for which a child is brought to the Court Service Unit -- either by the police or via complaints brought by parents, neighbors, or others who do not call the police for an arrest.
How is Virginia Doing?
In 2012, Virginia's juvenile property crime arrest rate dropped again to 628 per 100,000 population aged 10-17. The national average was 888. Continuing recent trends, all peer states -- Maryland (1,138), North Carolina (946), and Tennessee (900) -- also saw lower arrest rates for juvenile property crimes than the year before, although these remained higher than in Virginia. Massachusetts had nation's the lowest juvenile property crime rate in 2012 at 303.
Juvenile Arrest Rates, Property Crime
| Year | U.S. | VA | MA | NC | TN | MD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | 1,353 | 761 | 1,487 | 891 | 1,927 | |
| 2004 | 1,315 | 818 | 960 | 1,953 | ||
| 2005 | 1,219 | 774 | 1,263 | 1,017 | 1,814 | |
| 2006 | 1,175 | 725 | 495 | 1,222 | 895 | 1,860 |
| 2007 | 1,219 | 779 | 499 | 1,023 | 1,882 | |
| 2008 | 1,287 | 833 | 591 | 1,116 | 1,998 | |
| 2009 | 1,239 | 880 | 539 | 1,275 | 1,163 | 1,780 |
| 2010 | 1,091 | 765 | 439 | 1,134 | 1,093 | 1,568 |
| 2011 | 1,001 | 752 | 390 | 1,089 | 1,003 | 1,370 |
| 2012 | 888 | 628 | 303 | 946 | 900 | 1,138 |
| Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention. | ||||||
Virginia's juvenile arrest rate for violent crime in 2012 was 76 per 100,000 population aged 10-17. The U.S. average was 184 arrests per 100,000 youths. Virginia's rate was again markedly lower than all its peer states: In 2012, Maryland saw 289 arrests, North Carolina 152 and Tennessee 269. Wyoming replaced Maine as the state with the lowest youth violent crime rate -- 50 -- in 2012.
Juvenile Arrest Rates, Violent Crime
| Year | U.S. | VA | WY | NC | TN | MD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | 270 | 106 | 89 | 287 | 194 | 499 |
| 2004 | 267 | 122 | 119 | 200 | 507 | |
| 2005 | 279 | 146 | 129 | 289 | 263 | 495 |
| 2006 | 292 | 146 | 135 | 292 | 268 | 574 |
| 2007 | 282 | 147 | 124 | 283 | 550 | |
| 2008 | 282 | 137 | 129 | 263 | 587 | |
| 2009 | 255 | 107 | 83 | 248 | 252 | 522 |
| 2010 | 226 | 113 | 95 | 203 | 312 | 481 |
| 2011 | 204 | 110 | 85 | 181 | 295 | 347 |
| 2012 | 184 | 76 | 50 | 152 | 269 | 289 |
| Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Deliquency Prevention. | ||||||
The rate at which youths are brought to a Court
Service Unit has been declining
for many regions across the state. Virginia's
average juvenile intake rate has decreased
from 77.3 per 1,000 youth
in 2007 to 46.8 in 2016. The lowest
rate in 2016 was again in the Northern region
(30.7). The highest rate was in the
West Central region, with 65.5 intakes
per 1,000 youth.
What Influences Juvenile Intakes?
Policy and practice within each local justice system have a major influence on juvenile intakes. For example, some police departments have very strong community policing programs, where an officer may use alternatives to formal arrest with a youth seen or caught committing a crime -- informal counseling, in-home visits with the parents, etc. In other localities, law enforcement policy may be to take formal action on every alleged criminal activity. In other localities, strained resources may mean that many minor offenses go unreported, especially if more serious juvenile crime is prevalent.
What is the State's Role?
Juvenile intake services are provided through 32 state-operated and three locally operated Court Service Units.
State rankings are ordered so that #1 is understood to be the best.
Data Definitions and Sources
Arrest rates: US Department
of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention,
www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezaucr/
Intakes: Virginia Department
of Juvenile Justice, Research and Evaluation
Unit, by special request from the Juvenile
Tracking System
(updated annually)
Data for Fairfax City are included with Fairfax County.
Juvenile population in Virginia ranges from age 10 through age 21 (with 18 - 21 year olds included only if they were under juvenile justice supervision prior to their 18th birthday).
Notes: Intake is the process where a juvenile is brought before a Court Service Unit (CSU) for one or more alleged violations of law. At Intake, a specially trained officer determines whether there is enough evidence that the child violated a law, the appropriateness of release and/or referral without formal action (diversion), or formal action via petition.
If formal action is taken, the officer also determines whether the juvenile should be released to a parent or another responsible adult, placed in a detention alternative, or detained in a secure detention facility pending a court hearing.
People may be more familiar with arrest data. However, arrest data measures police activity and policy. In Virginia arrest reporting guidelines require that juvenile arrests are counted if an adult in the same situation would be arrested. This would exclude status offenses -- offenses that would not be crimes if committed by an adult (e.g., running way from home, truancy, etc.).
Following national guidelines, Virginia has since 1999 been gradually converting to an incident-based reporting format. While most police agencies are now using the incident-based system, the data across years may not be fully comparable until 2010 or later. Consequently, the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice now uses juvenile intake data rather than arrest data.
See the Data Sources and Updates Calendar for a detailed list of the data resources used for indicator measures on Virginia Performs.
