The United States of America does not have a juvenile justice system. Rather, it has 51 separate systems—each with its own history, its own balance of powers, its own maze of laws, policies, and practices. It is possible to make generalizations about them as a group, to pick out broad themes and basic assumptions they have in common, and to emphasize what makes them more or less the same; however, actually understanding them requires some inquiry into what makes them distinctive.

Each state profile contains the minimum you need to know to find your way around a state's juvenile justice system:

• who handles intake, investigation, and probation supervision of delinquents;
• who administers juvenile detention centers and correctional institutions;
• who takes responsibility for juveniles after they are released from state commitment;
• recent legislative reforms;
• names and contact information for significant state-level advisory groups, advocacy organizations, and membership associations; and
• state laws declaring juvenile justice purposes and philosophies, conditions under which juveniles may be tried as adults, and upper and lower ages of juvenile court delinquency jurisdiction.

We expect the State Juvenile Justice Profiles to become more nuanced and detailed over time as we get feedback from juvenile justice practitioners in the field.

Method and Sources of Information

The National Center for Juvenile Justice has tracked state juvenile justice issues, reforms, and innovations since its inception in 1973, and began publishing descriptions of the organizational and administrative structure of state delinquency services—probation supervision, state delinquent institutions, and aftercare—in 1987. The State Juvenile Justice Profiles web site updates and expands upon these prior efforts, providing concrete, accurate, and up-to-date descriptive information about the structure and substance of delinquency services in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, at a level of detail that makes real understanding possible.

Essentially, the State Juvenile Justice Profiles contain information:

• of various types (state laws, descriptive information, statistics);
• from various sources (practitioner respondents, directories, web sites, reports); and
• gathered through various methods (phone interviews, questionnaires, document reviews).

A variety of juvenile justice practitioners at both the state and local levels were contacted, including judges, chief probation officers, district attorneys, detention administrators, state juvenile corrections officials, state court administrators, and state juvenile justice specialists. Staff gathered information by faxing, e-mailing, or mailing questionnaires to several people in each state. Phone interviews were also conducted.

We compiled lists of initial contacts and summary information from several sources including:

• NCJJ's own records compiled in earlier and on-going efforts to document the structure of delinquency services and reforms in the states;
• State and local data suppliers to NCJJ's National Juvenile Court Data Archive;
• Various published directories, including the National Directory of Children and Youth Services 1999 - 2000 (Penny K. Spencer, Publisher) and the American Correctional Association's National Juvenile Detention Directory 1997-1999, Probation and Parole Directory 2001-2003, and Directory of Juvenile and Adult Correctional Departments, Institutions, Agencies, and Paroling Authorities 1998 - 2000; and
• Various state court and state juvenile corrections agency web sites and annual reports.

Viewing the State Profiles

We have tried to make selecting and viewing a state's profile as user-friendly as possible. You can view the entire profile of a state by selecting a state from the drop-down box in the top banner. Once you have chosen a particular state to explore, you can select different topics and jump right to them without scrolling through the profile.

With the exception of the transfer provision section, each state profile is one document.

Glossary

The Glossary page defines topics and terms and explains the reasoning behind our characterization of the information. We will regularly improve our explanations/definitions based on viewer queries for more information and clarification.

National Overviews

The National Overviews page summarizes information across states about the organization and administration of each delinquency service and related information. They also summarize various state laws, particularly those governing the transfer/certification of juveniles to the adult criminal court.

Links

The Links page gives you access to national and state agency and organization web pages on juvenile justice-related matters.

Updating Procedures

The State Profiles web site is intended to be a dynamic, accurate, and current source of information about America's juvenile justice systems. NCJJ staff members originally compiled information in late fall of 1999, and state contacts verified profiles in December 1999-February 2000. A second round of inquiry was conducted in May-July 2000; a third took place Summer 2002-Spring 2003; a fourth took place in Spring-August 2004; and a fifth encompassed October 2005-April 2006.

We make changes indicating the date last updated. As we start hearing from the field about what you would like to see, we will make attempts to compile this new information and expand the appropriate pages periodically.

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Copyright Information

The National Center for Juvenile Justice has copyrighted the information contained on this web site. There are no limits on the use of the information contained on this web site provided you use the citation listed on each profile, transfer provision, or overview. However, permission is required for republication of any material found in this web site.

Please let us know how you are using this web site. We are interested in receiving copies of any reports or articles based on its content. Also, e-mail us about presentations or meetings where this information has been helpful. Send your publication or comments to: State Profiles Project Manager, National Center for Juvenile Justice, 3700 S. Water Street, Suite 200, Pittsburgh, PA 15203; 412-227-6950 (phone); 412-227-6955 (fax); or profiles@ncjj.org (e-mail).

Acknowledgments

This web site has been designed and compiled under a cooperative agreement from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (#2005-JL-FX-K184) to the National Center for Juvenile Justice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, entitled "Technical Assistance to the Juvenile Court Project." Doug Thomas is the project director and Melanie King is the State Juvenile Justice Profiles web site manager. Janet Chiancone is the OJJDP program analyst.

Other NCJJ staff members currently participating in the State Profiles project include: Patrick Griffin, Wei Kang, Rachael Lord, Linda Szymanski, Patricia Torbet, and Susie Zawacki.