Juvenile Court Statistics 2005. - Office of Juvenile Justice and ...

Chapter 3National Estimates ofDelinquency Case ProcessingThis chapter quantifies the flow ofdelinquency cases referred to juvenilecourt through the stages of thejuvenile court system as follows.Referral: An agency or individualfiles a complaint with court intakethat initiates court processing. Casescan be referred to court intake by anumber of sources, including lawenforcement agencies, social serviceagencies, schools, parents, probationofficers, and victims.Detention: Juvenile courts sometimeshold youth in secure detentionfacilities during court processing toprotect the community, to ensure ajuvenile’s appearance at subsequentcourt hearings, to secure the juvenile’sown safety, or for the purposeof evaluating the juvenile. ThisReport describes the use of detentionbetween court referral and casedisposition only, although juvenilescan be detained by police prior toreferral and also by the courts afterdisposition while awaiting placementelsewhere.Intake: Formal processing of a caseinvolves the filing of a petition thatrequests an adjudicatory or waiverhearing. Informally processed cases,on the other hand, are handled withouta petition and without an adjudicatoryor waiver hearing.Waiver: One of the first decisionsmade at intake is whether a caseshould be processed in the criminal(adult) justice system rather than inthe juvenile court. Most states havemore than one mechanism for transferringcases to criminal court: prosecutorsmay have the authority to filecertain juvenile cases directly incriminal court; state statute mayorder that cases meeting certain ageand offense criteria be excluded fromjuvenile court jurisdiction and fileddirectly in criminal court; and a juvenilecourt judge may waive juvenilecourt jurisdiction in certain juvenilecases, thus authorizing a transfer tocriminal court. This Report describesthose cases that were transferred tocriminal court by judicial waiver only.Adjudication: At an adjudicatoryhearing, a youth may be adjudicated(judged) delinquent if the juvenilecourt determines that the youth didcommit the offense(s) charged in thepetition. If the youth is adjudicated,the case proceeds to a dispositionhearing. Alternatively, a case can bedismissed or continued in contemplationof dismissal. In these caseswhere the youth is not adjudicateddelinquent, the court can recommendthat the youth take some actionsprior to the final adjudication decision,such as paying restitution orvoluntarily attending drug counseling.Juvenile Court Statistics 2005 29