Statistics for Juvenile Justice

Juvenile Justice Compare The author of this report has been asked to do a compare and contrast of the juvenile justice system of three different states. While all states have a juvenile justice framework, each state does things at least a little differently and thus these differences and outliers should be explored and explained. The three states that will be compared and contrasted are New York, California and Georgia. While these three states have stark similarities, they also have ways that are entirely different from each other for whatever reason.

New York has a decentralized framework when it comes to the handling and adjudication of criminal justice cases for juveniles. The detention and probation supervision of juveniles in New York is done by the Local/Executive branch of government. The Juvenile Corrections arm of law enforcement resides in the statehouse while after-care supervision is done by a combination of the state and local jurisdictions. Delinquency jurisdiction for New York resides in the family courts and is established on a county-by-county basis. The family courts in question are of limited jurisdiction.

Like New York, California is also a decentralized state when it comes to the handling of juvenile cases. The Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) is the agency with primacy in the state. The service classifications for California area almost identical to New York. The detention and probation supervision of juveniles in California, like New York, is handled by the local authorities. Also like New York, juvenile corrections is handled by the state in California.

The one point of difference is the fact that aftercare is handled by only the state in California while it is handled by multiple jurisdictions in New York. Georgia is really entire different from both California and New York. Rather than being decentralized, Georgia has a state-wide Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice. This is a state executive agency that administers most of the delinquency services that are needed.

Detention and corrections are both handled solely by the state executive realm but both aftercare and probation are handled by a combination of local and state jurisdiction agencies (NCJJ, 2005). The NCJJ website in its more up-to-date and modern form, they openly tout that they are a non-profit and private organization dedicated to helping youths in the juvenile justice systems of the states around the country (NCJJ, 2016).

The author of this report then consulted the National Juvenile Defender Center (NJDC) website to see what they have to say about juvenile justice for each state when it comes to court cases. In New York, all children that are in delinquency proceedings have a right to a lawyer. This person is called a law guardian. The source of this law guardian can vary but it will generally come from a legal aid group, a contract attorney system or a panel system.

In Georgia, the state provides counsel to youth offenders through a statewide public defender system. This program is known as the Georgia Public Defender Standards Counsel, or GPDSC. A defender for each circuit is appointed to follow offenders through their original cases and any appeals. Funding is not provided by the state so it has to come from the counties. Finally, California has a system similar to Georgia, although it is entirely county-based. Their system is called the California Public Defender Association.

In short, Georgia and California are similar in the general public service they offer while New York puts much more onus on other parties in terms of where the defender comes from (NJDC, 2016). The Office for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has an informational chart that shows placement rates and how they are rising and falling in each state. Every single state has seen a drop in placement rate but some states have seen different drop amounts than others.

The four groups given are less than twenty-five percent, between twenty-five and thirty-nine percent, forty to forty-nine percent and more than fifty percent. New York is the only one among the triad specifically looked at in this report that had a drop of more than fifty percent. Both California and Georgia were among those that had a drop rate in the forties.

The only other states on the map that had a fifty-plus percentage drop rate were Arizona, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and a few states in the New England area to the east of New York (OJJDP, 2016). The author then went to the National Center for State Courts website to single out some data about juvenile justice. The data was a bit surprising. The author looked at juvenile cases as a proportion of all cases on the overall docket.

With Georgia, the rate was nearly one fifth, coming in at eighteen percent. The states of New York and California were a mere fraction of that, coming in at four percent and one percent, respectively. In other words, in terms of proportions, Georgia has four and a half times more juvenile cases as New York and eighteen more times cases than California. The author of this report really expected the inverse to be true as California has some rather sizeable criminal justice concerns in its state (NCSC, 2016).

The Juvenile Justice Geography, Policy, Practice and Statistics website also has some revealing data. In Georgia, there are a total of nine metrics shown and all of them are encouraging. Every metric noted is going down including total juvenile arrests, detained juveniles, juveniles in residential placement, violent crime arrests and so forth. In looking at California, the overall rates from which the plateau is coming are a lot higher but the rates are generally doing down. However, there are a few items that could be considered exceptions.

Total juvenile arrests are going down by just barely. The line for violent crime arrests is also flat. Property crime arrests has actually spiked but has been doing down more recently. Detained juveniles is also barely going down. Everything else is a steady fall down but it is very incremental. California seems to be more like Georgia in that most rates are doing down. There was a huge spike with juveniles doing property crimes but it has since leveled out significantly.

The rate of detained juveniles is flat and so is the rate for detained juveniles for violent crimes. Placement of youths is going down and.