• Each year approximately 250,000 youth are prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system.

• The juvenile arrest rate for violent crimes fell 48% between 1994 and 2003.

• The juvenile arrest rate for motor vehicle theft fell 62% between 1990-2003.

• Only 51% of all black students and 52% of all Hispanic students graduate high school, and only 20% of all black students and 16% of all Hispanic students leave high school college-ready.

• Juveniles who have been detained, are four to eight times more likely to die violently than the general population.

• Approximately 2/3 of males and ¾ of females in Chicago’s Juvenile Detention Facility meet the diagnostic criteria for one or more psychiatric disorder.

• Minority youth are 1.4 times more likely to be sentenced to the California Youth Authority by adult courts than are similarly offending white youth.

• The California Youth Authority spends an average of 60,000 per year on each youth in its institutions and camps.

• African-American (43%) and Latino (37%) youth are more likely than White youth (26%) to receive a sentence of incarceration, as opposed to a split sentence or probation.

• Suicide within juvenile detention and correctional facilities is more than 4 times greater than in the general population.

• There are approximately 27,000 youth in secure detention institutions on any given day, an increase of almost 100 % since 1985.

• More than 1/3 of the youth in detention are there for status offenses and various technical violations of probation and other rules.

•  A 2004 congressional report found that in 33 states, youth with mental illness are held in detention centers without any charges.

• For those convicted of drug offenses, a lower percentage of African-American youth (37%) received probation than White youth (44%) or Latino youth (53%).

• 46 states authorize or require juvenile court judges to waive jurisdiction over individual cases involving minors, so as to allow prosecution in adult criminal courts.

• 34 states have enacted "once an adult, always an adult" statues, meaning that a youth who is convicted in adult court will typically remain in adult court, regardless of the offense.

The National Juvenile Justice Site

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