ABSTRACT
What You Need to Know
■ Delinquency can be defined in terms of: criminal laws, just like for adults; status offenses, which are applied only to youths; or sociological/criminological definitions, which take on a specific meaning depending on the interests of the individual or group studying delinquency.
■ Defining delinquency requires one to define who is a juvenile. Most states outline minimum and maximum ages as well as exceptions in which the youth can be handled as an adult.
■ Measures of delinquency include official records of the juvenile justice and criminal justice system and self-report surveys.
■ According to the UCR, roughly 8.5 percent of all arrests are of youths under the age of 18, with 14 percent of all property arrests being of youths.
■ Court and correctional statistics also provide insight to the extent of delinquency, although the magnitude of the problem appears much less due to the funneling effect of system involvement.
■ Self-report measures reveal that virtually all youths offend, although this is true only when status offenses are included. Otherwise, the results are remarkably similar to official figures when serious crimes are considered.
■ Regardless of the measure used, the trend in delinquency has been one of large increases since the 1960s with some leveling off and decreases since the late 1990s.
