ABSTRACT
Relatively few juvenile offenders are held in jails. According to the Annual Survey of Jails, less than 2 percent of the jail population in the United States consists of persons under the age of eighteen (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000a). As seen in Figure 14.1, in 1997 an estimated 9,105 juveniles were in jails nationwide. Of these, 7,007 were held as adults, while 2,098 were held as juveniles. Persons under the age of eighteen were more than three times as likely to be in jail as adults than as juveniles.
