Disaggregating delinquency trends in arrests and self -reported illegal behavior

Recent claims that juvenile delinquency is declining and that there is no juvenile crime wave rely heavily on official reports of juvenile arrests for serious offenses such as aggravated assault and murder. While the study of these types of offenses is certainly important, the majority of juvenile offending is of a much less serious nature. I propose that a more complete picture of juvenile offending trends should incorporate a more broad range of juvenile behaviors including a substantial focus on minor offending.;The Uniform Crime Reports are virtually the only source of official information on long-term trends in officially recorded juvenile crime in the United States. Perhaps the most important advantage of these data, in terms of this project, is the ability to compare arrest rates of juveniles over approximately the last 40 years. Although arrest data have been used to study trends in violent offending, they also provide longitudinal information on more minor offending such as runaway, curfew violations, drunkenness and vandalism. In comparison, self-reports of delinquent behavior have been underutilized in the study of national crime trends due to a lack of nationally representative samples as well as a focus on more minor offending. Since it is important to study crime trends with as many methods as possible, this study will also examine estimates of time trends in self-reported offending based on the Monitoring the future Survey, an annual national survey of high school seniors. Like the UCR the MTF survey measures range of serious offending, but its main strength lies in its measurement of minor offending including many forms of drug use, truancy, and traffic tickets. Second, the MTF survey offers the advantage of covering offenses that are knowingly committed by juveniles, whether or not they are detected by victims or reported to authorities.;Findings from this study indicate that (1) self-report data show that longitudinal trends in both juvenile arrest rates and self-reports of delinquent behavior vary considerably by offense type; (2) an even greater amount of variation exists in trends for arrest rates than for rates of self-reported delinquency; (3) trend patterns for individual offenses vary across self-report and official data, with the exception of assault and arson; (4) trends for serious offenses such as assault and robbery show a moderate amount of similarity over the last 37 years; (5) trends for minor offenses have shown very disparate patterns over the last 37 years.