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Navigating Concerns on Youth Crime, Violence, and Behavioral Health

Methodology and Glossary

Methodology Overview

With support from Prudential and the W.T. Grant Foundation, The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center developed Navigating Concerns on Youth Crime, Violence, and Behavioral Health: What Does the Data Say? by compiling, analyzing, and synthesizing the most current publicly available data on youth mental health and victimization, juvenile arrests, youth court cases, and juvenile detention and placement. The goal of this tool is to provide policymakers, practitioners, and advocates with context and new insights on current and historical trends related to youth arrests, mental health, juvenile justice involvement, and systemwide racial and ethnic disparities.

This page provides a glossary of juvenile justice terms, a basic overview of the juvenile justice system flow, and descriptions of and links to primary data sources used in the development of each section of this data tool.

Juvenile Justice Glossary

  • Adjudication: The process through which a judge determines whether a youth is guilty or delinquent of committing an offense. Akin to an adult criminal conviction.
  • Court referral: The process where a youth is referred to the court system for intervention or resolution of a legal matter, such as suspected delinquent behavior or welfare concerns
  • Delinquent offenses: Acts committed by minors that would be considered crimes if committed by adults
  • Detention: Pretrial temporary custody of a youth in a secure facility
  • Disposition: Final decision or outcome of a delinquency case that is akin to sentencing for adults
  • Diversion: Treatment and programs that can be used to hold youth accountable in lieu of a formal juvenile court process
  • Non-person offense: An offense that does not involve direct harm or threat of harm to another individual; these offenses typically involve actions that are considered crimes against property, public order, or society at large.
  • Person offense: Various types of violent or nonviolent acts that directly affect the physical or emotional well-being of another person
  • Petition: A formal document to initiate court proceedings against a youth who is alleged to have committed a delinquent offense
  • Placement: The decision made by a judge or other authority regarding where a youth will be placed for supervision, treatment, or rehabilitation
  • Status offenses: Noncriminal behaviors such as truancy, running away, and curfew violations
  • Technical violations: Failure to comply with specific terms of probation or court orders
  • Violent offenses: Offenses that involve force or threat of force including homicide and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault

Juvenile Justice System Flow

Chart illustrating Juvenile Justice System Flow

Detailed Methodology

Youth Mental Health and Victimization

Data presented on youth mental health for high school students between 2005 and 2021 comes from the Youth Risk and Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) and the Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey (ABES). Both the YRBSS and the ABES are developed and administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to monitor health-related behaviors among youth in the United States. The YRBSS is a biennial (conducted every two years) school-based survey that collects data from high school students across the United States. The survey is conducted using a two-stage cluster sampling design, where schools are first selected, and then classes or periods are randomly chosen within those schools. The survey is self-administered and voluntary, ensuring anonymity and confidentiality for participating students. The YRBSS includes a range of questions related to mental health, such as feelings of sadness or hopelessness, suicidal ideation and behavior, self-harm, and experiences of bullying or violence. These questions aim to assess the prevalence of mental health issues, emotional distress, and related risk behaviors among youth.

The ABES was a one-time, online survey conducted between January and June of 2021. The aim of the survey was to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health and well-being of U.S. high school students. The survey employed a stratified, three-stage cluster probability-based sampling strategy to obtain a nationally representative sample of students in grades 9–12. The ABES included 97 questions from the 2021 YRBSS survey, 6 of which were modified to allow youth to indicate if they were attending school virtually, and 12 new questions specific to COVID-19 related behaviors and experiences.

In addition to YRBSS and ABES data, we used data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) administered annually by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA) to assess the number of youth between the ages of 12 and 17 who received treatment for major depressive episodes in 2022.

Estimates of youth victimization in 2022 come from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). NIBRS collects detailed data on crime incidents reported to law enforcement agencies across the United States, including information on victim characteristics and victim-offender relationships. A more detailed description of NIBRS is presented in the Youth Arrests section below.

Data on firearm-related deaths between 2018 and 2022 for youth under the age of 18 come from the CDC WONDER, Multiple Cause of Death Files. CDC WONDER is an online database system that offers a variety of public health data. The Multiple Cause of Death Files in CDC WONDER provide information on deaths occurring within the United States, including the underlying cause of death and up to 20 additional contributing causes. The data is based on death certificates filed in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and it is coded using the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) system. We included the following ICD codes in our count of firearm-related deaths: X93 (assault by handgun discharge); X94 (assault by rifle, shotgun, and larger firearm discharge); X95 (assault by other and unspecified firearm discharge).

Information on chronic absenteeism in 2018 and 2022 comes from the Return 2 Learn (R2L) Tracker. R2L defines chronic absenteeism as the percentage of youth absent from school for at least 10 percent of the school year. R2L was developed by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Davidson College’s Crisis College Initiative (C2i) and collects and reports district-level data on chronic absenteeism from each state, as available, from 2017–2023.

Primary Data Sources

YRBSS: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/yrbs/index.htm

NIBRS: https://bjs.ojp.gov/national-incident-based-reporting-system-nibrs

ABES: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/abes.htm

NSDUH: https://www.samhsa.gov/data/data-we-collect/nsduh-national-survey-drug-use-and-health

WONDER: https://wonder.cdc.gov/

R2L: https://www.returntolearntracker.net/

Citations

  1. SAMHSA, Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2022, Table 7.21A, accessed June 4, 2024, https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/reports/rpt42728/NSDUHDetailedTabs2022/NSDUHDetailedTabs2022/NSDUHDetTabsSect7pe2022.htm#tab7.21a.
  2. Development Services Group, Inc., “Intersection Between Mental Health and the Juvenile Justice System” (Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2017), https://www.ojjdp.gov/mpg/litreviews/Intersection-Mental-Health-Juvenile-Justice.pdf.
  3. “Suicide and Homicide Death Rates Among Youth and Young Adults Aged 10–24: United States, 2001–2021,” Data Brief No. 471, National Center for Health Statistics, accessed April 2, 2024, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db471.htm#:~:text=Vital%20Statistics%20System-,Suicide%20rates%20for%20people%20aged%2010–24%20increased%20from%202007,11.0)%20(Figure%201.  
  4. “Unintentional Drug Overdose Death Rates Among US Youth Aged 15–19,” National Institute on Drug Abuse, accessed April 2, 2024, https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/infographics/unintentional-drug-overdose-death-rates-among-us-youth-aged-15-19.
  5. “Perceived Racism and Demographic, Mental Health, and Behavioral Characteristics Among High School Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic—Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey, United States, January–June 2021,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accessed March 25, 2024, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/su/su7103a4.htm?s_cid=su7103a4_w.  
  6. “Disruptions to School and Home Life Among High School Students During the COVID-19  Pandemic—Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey, United States, January–June 2021,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accessed April 2, 2024, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/su/su7103a5.htm?s_cid=su7103a5_w.   
  7. FBI, Crime Data Explorer, NIBRS Estimation Tables 2022, Table 3a, accessed January 10, 2024, https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/downloads.
  8. Kaiser Family Foundation, “The Impact of Gun Violence on Children and Adolescents” (San Francisco, CA: 2024), https://www.kff.org/mental-health/issue-brief/the-impact-of-gun-violence-on-children-and-adolescents/.
  9. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, “Multiple Cause of Death 2005–2022 on CDC WONDER Online Database,” 2024. Data are from the Multiple Cause of Death Files, 2005–2022, as compiled from data provided by the 57 vital statistics jurisdictions through the Vital Statistics Cooperative Program. Accessed June 4, 2024, http://wonder.cdc.gov/mcd-icd10-expanded.html.  
  10. Allison Lind, Susan Mason, and Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, “Increasing Firearm-Related Deaths among U.S. Black Rural Youths,” New England Journal of Medicine 390, no. 20 (2024): 1932–1933, https://www.nejm.org/doi/abs/10.1056/NEJMc2403665.
  11. SAMHSA, Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 2022, Table 7.21A, accessed June 4, 2024, https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/reports/rpt42728/NSDUHDetailedTabs2022/NSDUHDetailedTabs2022/NSDUHDetTabsSect7pe2022.htm#tab7.21a.
  12. American Enterprise Institute, “Return 2 Learn Tracker,” accessed June 3, 2024, https://www.returntolearntracker.net/. 
  13. “Girls in the Juvenile Justice System,” Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, accessed March 25, 2024, https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/model-programs-guide/literature-reviews/girls-juvenile-justice-system.
  14. Development Services Group, Inc., “LGBTQ Youths in the Juvenile Justice System” (Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2014), https://www.ojjdp.gov/mpg/litreviews/LGBTQYouthsintheJuvenileJusticeSystem.pdf. 
  15. Josh Weber and Christina Gilbert, “Systems in Crisis: Rethinking the Juvenile Justice Workforce and Foundational Strategies for Improving Public Safety and Youth Outcomes” (New York: The Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2023, https://projects.csgjusticecenter.org/systems-in-crisis/systems-in-crisis-brief/

Youth Arrests

Given the constraints of data availability, we use youth arrest data in this tool as a proxy for understanding youth crime. Arrest data offer consistency in reporting and accessibility, allowing for valuable insights into trends over time and across jurisdictions. We recognize, however, that youth arrests are an imperfect measure of youth involvement in crime. Many crimes go unreported to law enforcement, and even among reported crimes, only some result in arrests, Additionally, arrests may be higher for certain demographic groups due to systemic issues such as police practices, rather than true differences in criminal behavior. Despite these caveats, patterns observed across victimization, crime, and arrest data generally align.

Data regarding arrests for youth under the age of 18 between 2000 and 2022 comes from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. Counts and rates of reported youth arrests are derived from two distinct data sources: the FBI’s historic Summary Reporting System (SRS) and the newly implemented National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS).

The SRS gathers information from law enforcement agencies across the country on eight major index crimes, as well as additional details such as the number of arrests, clearance rates, and basic characteristics of the victims and people who commit crimes. The FBI stopped SRS data collection after 2020 and required law enforcement agencies to use NIBRS to report crime statistics to the FBI. NIBRS is designed to improve the accuracy and reliability of crime statistics gathered by law enforcement agencies. One key difference between the SRS and NIBRS is that SRS includes aggregate count data reported to the FBI by agency and by month, rather than incident-level data. Additionally, the range of offenses covered by SRS data is smaller than NIBRS data. Nearly all law enforcement agencies in the country can report SRS data to the FBI, meaning that SRS data released represents nearly all the reported index crimes. In 2021, the FBI did not accept SRS data because of the transition to NIBRS. This change decreased the number of agencies that submitted their crime data and thus reduced the reliability of state estimates in 2021. For this reason, 2021 estimates are excluded from Navigating Concerns on Youth Crime, Violence, and Behavioral Health: What Does the Data Say?

In 2022, the FBI again began accepting SRS data from agencies that were not yet able to report NIBRS data. To account for incomplete data reporting coverage, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in collaboration with RTI International (RTI) employed statistical modeling techniques to produce national estimates of arrests and other crime indicators in 2022. A more detailed explanation of the estimation methodology can be found here.

In this data tool, we use SRS data for all analyses involving youth arrests between 2000 and 2020, drawing from the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program data: Arrests by Age, Sex, and Race dataset released by the FBI and cleaned and aggregated by Jacob Kaplan. For all analyses related to 2022 youth arrests for index crimes, we use NIBRS national estimates produced by BJS and RTI.

For analyses on 2022 arrests for non-index crimes, we rely on NIBRS data from 31 states with high levels of NIBRS reporting. Our selection criteria involved comparing the number of agencies within each state reporting data to NIBRS in 2022 and SRS in 2020. We included states in our analysis if the number of agencies reporting in both years was similar. Analyses on 2022 non-index crimes are based on reported arrest counts from each of the 31 states, not BJS and RTI estimates.

Youth arrest rates per 100,000 youth were calculated by dividing the number of estimated youth arrests each year by the U.S. juvenile population (age 10 to 17, except when examining arrest rate by age group, and we used population counts corresponding to each arrest age category) then multiplying by 100,000. Population data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The table below shows the UCR offense groupings we used to report offenses by type including non-person, person, and violent.

Offense CategoryUCR Offenses
Non-personDrug possession/sales
Arson
Burglary
Motor vehicle theft
Stolen property
Theft
Vandalism
DUI
Disorderly conduct
Drunkenness
Embezzlement
Forgery
Fraud
Gambling
Prostitution
Suspicion
Weapons
Curfew, loitering, and vagrancy
Liquor law
Runaways
Other
PersonFamily offenses
Other sex offenses
Simple assault
ViolentAggravated assault
Homicide
Rape
Robbery

Primary Data Sources

SRS: https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/

NIBRS: https://bjs.ojp.gov/national-incident-based-reporting-system-nibrs

Citations

  1. Nirmita Panchal, “The Impact of Gun Violence on Children and Adolescents,” Kaiser Family Foundation, February 22, 2024, accessed June 3, 2024, https://www.kff.org/mental-health/issue-brief/the-impact-of-gun-violence-on-children-and-adolescents/.
  2. Jeff Asher, “It’s Early, But Murder Is Falling Even Faster So Far In 2024,” Jeff-Analytics, April 2, 2024, accessed June 3, 2024, https://jasher.substack.com/p/its-early-but-murder-is-falling-even.
  3. “Gun Violence and Youth/Young Adults: Literature Review: A Product of the Model Programs Guide,” Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2024, https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/model-programs-guide/literature-reviews/gun-violence-and-youth-young-adults#6-0; “The Evidence of Effectiveness,” Cure Violence Global, Updated 2022, https://cvg.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Cure-Violence-Evidence-Summary.pdf; Anthony Braga et al., “Oakland Ceasefire Evaluation: Final Report to the City of Oakland” (Northeastern University, 2019), https://cao-94612.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/Oakland-Ceasefire-Evaluation-Final-Report-May-2019.pdf. 
  4. Elizabeth Cauffman et al., “Crossroads in juvenile justice: The impact of initial processing decision on youth 5 years after first arrest,” Development and Psychopathology (2020): 1–14.
  5. Richard Mendel, “Protect and Redirect: America’s Growing Movement to Divert Youth Out of the Justice System” (Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2024).
  6. Elizabeth Seigle, Nastassia Walsh, and Josh Weber, “Core Principles for Reducing Recidivism and Improving Other Outcomes for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System” (New York: The Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2014); Gina Vincent, Dara Drawbridge, and Rachael Perrault, “Long-Term Impact and Cost-Effectiveness of Risk-Needs Assessment and Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) Reforms in Juvenile Probation: The Long-Term RNR-Impact Study,” (University of Massachusetts Medical School, 2021), https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp-nij/grants/303423.pdf.
  7. Josh Weber and Stephanie Shaw, “Breaking the Rules: Rethinking Condition Setting and Enforcement in Juvenile Probation” (New York: The Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2022), https://projects.csgjusticecenter.org/breaking-the-rules/.
  8. Alex R. Piquero, Michael T. Baglivio, and Kevin T. Wolff, “A Statewide Analysis of the Impact of Restitution and Fees on Juvenile Recidivism in Florida Across Race & Ethnicity,” https://finesandfeesjusticecenter.org/content/uploads/2023/02/Piquero_et_al_Florida-juvenile-fees-study.pdf.
  9. Annie E. Casey Foundation, “How Youth Incarceration Undermines Public Safety,” January 18, 2023, accessed March 25, 2024, https://www.aecf.org/blog/reviewing-the-evidence-how-youth-incarceration-undermines-public-safety.
  10. “Technical Assistance: Maintaining Youth in Juvenile Court: Published Research,” California Office of Youth and Community Restoration, 2023, https://www.chhs.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/2023_03_21_Transfer-TA-Research-Summary-ADA-Accessible.pdf.
  11. Elizabeth Seigle, Nastassia Walsh, and Josh Weber, “Core Principles for Reducing Recidivism and Improving Other Outcomes for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System” (New York: The Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2014); “Juvenile Justice Cost-Benefit Analysis,” Washington State Institute of Public Policy, December 2023, accessed June 3, 2024, https://www.wsipp.wa.gov/BenefitCost?topicId=1.

Youth Court Cases

All data reported on youth court case processing between 2005 and 2021 come from the Juvenile Court Statistics series, a comprehensive national data collection effort conducted by the National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ). It provides detailed case-level data on the processing of youth in the juvenile justice system across the United States. The Juvenile Court Statistics series collects data from individual juvenile courts, probation offices, and other juvenile justice agencies nationwide. Data is collected on delinquency cases, status offense cases, and the use of secure detention and residential placement facilities. The data includes detailed information on the demographic characteristics of youth (age, gender, race/ethnicity), offense details, and case processing information (detention, adjudication, disposition). The NCJJ employs sampling techniques and weighting procedures to estimate national and state-level statistics, ensuring comprehensive coverage even when data is not available from all jurisdictions.

The NCJJ provides access to the Juvenile Court Statistics data through various platforms, including the Easy Access to Juvenile Court Statistics (EZAJCS) online tool, which served as our primary source for case-level data on delinquency cases in juvenile courts, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Statistical Briefing Book (SBB), which served as our primary source for information of petitioned status offenses.

Referral, petition, and adjudication rates per 100,000 youth were calculated by dividing the number of estimated youth per year at each point in the juvenile system by the U.S. juvenile population (age 10 to 17) then multiplying by 100,000. Population data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Primary Data Sources

EZAJCS: https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezajcs/

SBB: https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/statistical-briefing-book

Citations

  1. Anthony Petrosino, Carolyn Turpin-Petrosino, and Sarah Guckenburg, “Formal System Processing of Juveniles: Effects on Delinquency,” Campbell Systematic Reviews 6, no. 1 (2010) 1–88, https://doi.org/10.4073/csr.2010.1.
  2. Gina M. Vincent, Laura S. Guy, and Thomas Grisso, “Risk Assessment in Juvenile Justice: A Guidebook for Implementation” (MacArthur Foundation, 2012), https://modelsforchange.net/publications/346/Risk_Assessment_in_Juvenile_Justice_A_Guidebook_for_Implementation.pdf. 
  3. Elizabeth Cauffman et al., “Crossroads in juvenile justice: The impact of initial processing decision on youth 5 years after first arrest,” Development and Psychopathology (2020), 1–14.
  4. Josh Weber, “Reducing State-Imposed Barriers to School and Work for People with Juvenile Records” (New York: The Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2021).
  5. Richard Mendel, “Protect and Redirect: America’s Growing Movement to Divert Youth Out of the Justice System” (Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2024).

Detention and Placement

Analyses on youth in detention and placement come from two primary sources: the EZAJCS described in the Youth Court Cases section above and OJJDP’s Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP). The CJRP, which NCJJ provides access to via the Easy Access to Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (EZACJRP) online tool, is a biennial (every two years) census conducted by surveying all public and private residential facilities, including detention centers, correctional facilities, group homes, and treatment centers. On a designated reference date, each facility reports the number of youth residing in the facility and their demographic characteristics, offense information, and length of stay.

The key difference between detention and residential placement data in EZAJCS and EZACJRP is that EZAJCS captures the court’s decisions to detain or place youth in secure facilities over a period of time (e.g., a calendar year) while EZACJRP provides a snapshot of the population in residential placement facilities on a specific reference date.

In this data tool, we use EZAJCS data to show trends between 2005 and 2021 in rates of detention and residential placement overall and by offense type. We use the EZACJRP to look at trends related to detention and residential placement for status offenses and technical violations, which EZAJCS does not separate out.

Detention and residential placement rates per 100,000 youth were calculated by dividing the number of estimated youth detained or placed each year by the U.S. juvenile population (age 10 to 17) then multiplying by 100,000. Population data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Primary Data Sources

EZAJCS: https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezajcs/

EZACJRP: https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezacjrp/

Citations

  1. Annie E. Casey Foundation, “How Youth Incarceration Undermines Public Safety,” January 18, 2023, accessed March 25, 2024, https://www.aecf.org/blog/reviewing-the-evidence-how-youth-incarceration-undermines-public-safety.
  2. Josh Weber and Stephanie Shaw, “Breaking the Rules: Rethinking Condition Setting and Enforcement in Juvenile Probation” (New York: The Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2022), https://projects.csgjusticecenter.org/breaking-the-rules/.
  3. “Alternatives to Detention and Confinement: Literature Review: A Product of the Model Programs Guide,” Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2024, https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/model-programs-guide/literature-reviews/alternatives-to-detention-and-confinement#8-0.

Juvenile Justice Racial and Ethnic Disparities

In this data tool, we assess racial and ethnic disparities at each point in the juvenile justice system from arrest through adjudication. We rely on the FBI’s SRS data (see the Youth Arrest section for detailed description) to evaluate racial disparities at arrest between 2000 and 2020, and EZAJCS (see the Youth Court Cases section for detailed description) to look at racial and ethnic disparities from referral to adjudication between 2005 and 2021.

For disparity analyses at arrest, we compare Black, Asian, American Indian, and White youth arrest rates. We exclude the Latino ethnic category because SRS does not contain reliable data on ethnicity. Law enforcement agencies may report ethnicity to SRS but most do not. For disparity analyses from referral to adjudication, we include a Latino category in our comparisons because EZAJCS contains more complete and reliable ethnicity data.

We measured racial and ethnic disparity using a relative rate index (RRI). The RRI provides a standardized comparison between two different groups on a particular event or outcome. To determine the RRI, we first calculated the rate of an event (e.g., arrest, referral, petition) for each racial and ethnic group by dividing the number of youth in the group who experienced the event by the total population of youth in that group. Population data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. Then we divided the rate for the group of interest (e.g., Black youth) by the rate for the reference group, which in this tool is always White youth. An RRI of 1.0 indicates that the rates are equal for both groups (i.e., no disparity). An RRI greater than 1.0 indicates that the group of interest experiences the event at a higher rate than the reference group. An RRI less than 1.0 indicates that the group of interest experiences the event at a lower rate than the reference group.

Primary Data Sources

SRS: https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/

EZAJCS: https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezajcs/

Citations

  1. Unless otherwise indicated, all disparities are calculated using population-based relative rate ratios (also known as relative rate index, RRI), which compares the rate of any outcome experienced by youth populations of color to the rate of that same outcome experienced by the White population. First, rates are calculated by taking the number of youth who experienced an outcome within a particular racial or ethnic group in that population. Then, rates are compared across populations. An RRI between the Black and White populations of 10 to 1 would indicate that the Black population experienced an outcome at a rate 10 times higher than the White population. An RRI between Black and White populations of less than 1 would indicate that the Black population experienced that outcome at a lower rate than the White population.
  2. “Stemming the Rising Tide: Racial & Ethnic Disparities in Youth Incarceration & Strategies for Change” (San Francisco: Burns Institute, 2020).
  3. Richard Mendel, “Protect and Redirect: How to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Juvenile Diversion” (Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2024).