OCR Text |
Show Juvenile Offenses Continue to Jump, Renort from Utah Court Announces The State Juvenile Court Statistical Report for the first six months of 1967 reflects re-flects a continued rise in delinquency referrals to the State's Five Juvenil? Court Districts. The statistics sta-tistics are the first from a newly adopted statewide data processing system of fPivonilo Court statistical reporting. During the six month's period, 7,702 non-traffic referrals involving 4,931 juveniles (3,833 boys, 77. 74 per cent; and 1.098 girls 22.2G per cent) for a total of 8,589 offenses were processed pro-cessed in Utah's five Juvenile Juv-enile Court Districts. Traffic Traf-fic cases for the period totaled to-taled 7,390. Of the 7,7'f2 non-traffic referrals, G, 703 were for alleged delinquent del-inquent behavior, 671 involved in-volved neglect and dependency depend-ency cases; and 32S other type cases including adults contributing to the delinquency delin-quency of minors. The figures reflect an in crease of 8.44 per cent o-ver o-ver 1966 referrals. Since 1960 there has been a 9.4 per cent average annual increase in the rate of referrals re-ferrals to the state's Juvl enile Court system. This compares with an approximate approx-imate 4.8 per cent increase in the average daily mem-ibersMp mem-ibersMp in the secondary grades of the Utah Public School System over the same time period. The del inquency referral rate has therefore increased at nearly near-ly twice the secondary school age population since 1960. Of the 1967 delinquency referrals to the Juvenile Court 84.5. per cent were from law enforcement a-gencies; a-gencies; 7.2 per cent from various public and private agencies including other Courts and by the youths themselves; 6.9 per cent were from school districts and 1.4 per cent by families fam-ilies and relatives of those referred. Leading reasons for referral re-ferral to the Courts included includ-ed 26.6 per cent for theft catergories including car theft; 16.0 per cent were for 'act against self" including in-cluding possession of alcohol, al-cohol, glue sniffing, use of narcotics, etc; 36.6 per cent were for "behavioral problems" including run a-way, a-way, truancy and being ungovernable; 9.3 per cent involved offenses against property such as vandalism, vandal-ism, arson, and trespass; 3.3 per cent were for various var-ious types of assult inelud ing sex offenses; and 9.0 per cent were referred for conditions of neglect and dependency. Ethnic backgrounds of youth referred were as follows: fol-lows: 9.7 per cent Spanish American; 2.6 per cent Negro; 2.1 per cent Indian 2 per cent Orental; 85.8 per cent all other ethnic groups. 59.3 per cent were reported as living with both natural parents. Of those reporting religions affiliation, 69.9 per cent were L.D.S.: 13.9 per cent Catholic; 10.9 per cent Protestant: 1.9 per cent o-:ther o-:ther religious affiliation; 3.3 per cent claimed no religious re-ligious affiliation. 50.8 per cent of the youth referred indicated some degree of current church attendance or religious activity. 49.2 per cent indicated no religious reli-gious activity. 9.0 per cent of all cases referred to Juvenile Court were members of families receiving public assistance 5.2 per cent of those not receiving public assistance were from families with income less than $3,000 per year; 20.3 per cent, income in-come from $3,000 to $5,000 50.4 per cent family incomes in-comes of $5,000 to 10,000 per year; 15.4 per cent were from families of annual an-nual incomes in the excess of $10,000. Of the youth referred, 78.1 were not employed full or part time at the time of referral; 15. 2 per cent had part time employment; and 6.7 per cent were employed full time. 55.1 per cent of all referrals re-ferrals were doing poorly in academic school work or were school drop outs, while 44.9 per cent were doing average or better in school. 65.1 per cent were reported as behavioral prob lems in school. In 51.9 per cent of the families of delinquents de-linquents referred, the father fa-ther was tihe only era ployed adult. . In 10.6 per cent only the mothers were employed; 25.5 per cent both parents were working; work-ing; 11.9 per cent neither parents was working. Of the oases referred' to the Juvenile Court during the six month period, 51.3 per cent were closed non-' non-' judicially (by the youth admitting the offense and the Probation Department termin&ting the case without with-out formal court proceeding's). proceed-ing's). 48.7 per cent of the cases were processed judicially jud-icially (in these instances the offense was heard by the Juvenile Court Judge in a formal judicial proceeding). 25.2 per cent of all judicially-heard cases were placed on probation. 8 per eent were dismissed for lack of evidence or after admonishment. The balance bal-ance of the youth adjudged adjudg-ed delinquent were assessed assess-ed a board range of court-ordered court-ordered dispositions inelud ing payment of fines and restitution for damage incurred, in-curred, given work assign merits on public projects, placed with other agencies or parties, committed to a state institution or given a combination of these and other dispositions available avail-able to the Court. 106 juveniles juv-eniles were committed during the period to the State Industrial School by the Courts compared to 104 for the first six months of 1966. |