Easy Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement

The Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (CJRP) was administered for the first time in 1997 by the Bureau of the Census for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). CJRP replaced the Census of Public and Private Juvenile Detention, Correctional, and Shelter Facilities, also known as the Children in Custody (CIC) census, which had been conducted since the early 1970’s. The CJRP, which will be repeated biennially, provides the Nation with the most detailed picture of juveniles in custody ever produced. The CJRP asks juvenile residential custody facilities in the U.S. to describe each youth assigned a bed in the facility on the census reference date. The census is not sent to adult facilities, or facilities exclusively for drug or mental health treatment, or abused or neglected children.

The CJRP differs fundamentally from the CIC census. CIC collected aggregate data on juveniles held in each facility (e.g., number of juveniles in the facility). CJRP, instead, collects an individual record on each juvenile held in the residential facility, with information on the juvenile's gender, date of birth, race, placement authority, most serious offense charged, court adjudication status, date of admission, and security status. These data were requested for all offenders under 21 years of age in the facility. Facilities also provided information on the housing of overflow detention populations, physical layout of the facility, separation of residents, counts of residents age 21 and older, and the use of locked doors and/or gates.

The Census Bureau identifies juvenile residential facilities for court-involved offenders across the U.S. In late September the Census Bureau mails out a notification letter to all identified facilities indicating that the CJRP forms will soon arrive in the mail. The letter also indicates the reference date for the census and the type of information that will be requested. Respondents are given a contact number with the Census Bureau in case they have questions or problems.

A few weeks prior to the census reference date, the Census Bureau mails CJRP forms (2006 | 2003 | 2001 | 1999 | 1997) to respondents representing nearly 4,000 public and private residential juvenile facilities. Some State and regional agencies provide CJRP data for more than one facility under their jurisdiction.

The CJRP allows for electronic submission of the data by larger facilities and central reporters. As part of this program, Census provides data specifications to participating respondents and a spreadsheet format so that these respondents can also complete the form through common spreadsheet programs such as Lotus® or Microsoft Excel®.

Data are to be returned one month after the reference date. Facilities that have not responded within a few months are sent a reminder notice and asked that a completed response be sent in. Census staff begin telephone calls to the facilities and central reports that had not responded by that time. Census closes out data collection in mid-July. Processing of the data including error checks, imputation and editing continues until the following September.

Data are received and prepared for analysis at the Bureau of the Census facility in Jeffersonville, Indiana. Respondent questions were fielded by Government Division, Bureau of the Census.

The inclusion criteria for the census are as follows:

• Younger than 21.
• Assigned a bed in a residential facility at the end of the day on the census reference date.
• Charged with an offense or court-adjudicated for an offense.
• In residential placement because of that offense.

These juveniles are the universe for the data analyses in Easy Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement. Facility residents age 21 or older, and any nonoffenders are not included in Easy Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement.

The Bureau of the Census (Census) mails out CJRP forms to nearly 4,000 identified facilities. Of these facilities, some turn out to be closed on the reference date. A few additional facilities are identified as open on the reference date after the initial mailout (through responses from facilities or other contacts) and are subsequently sent forms. Of the facilities open on the reference date, some may be temporarily out of scope (i.e., they did not hold offenders on the reference date). Some facilities may be identified as permanently out of scope (i.e., they were not able to hold juvenile offenders over night). The remaining facilities are identified as in-scope. Of the in-scope facilities a small number may not send back the census forms nor respond to several phone calls from Census Bureau personnel requesting participation in the census. These facilities are designated non-respondents and the Census Bureau imputes responses for them. Using the number of in-scope facilities as a base, the CJRP facility response rate was 96% in 1997, 100% in 1999, 99% in 2001, 100% in 2003, and 100% in 2006.

Some facilities were not able to provide all the information requested for all juveniles meeting CJRP inclusion criteria. Roughly 1 in 6 records have had data imputed for one or more variables because information was missing. Data were imputed from complete records to fill in incomplete records. Therefore, reported CJRP estimates regarding the characteristics of juveniles in custody may differ from their actual characteristics. More detail on the imputation procedures is available upon request.

CJRP provides 1-day population counts of juveniles in residential placement facilities. One-day counts give a picture of the standing population in facilities. One-day counts are substantially different from annual admission and release data, which give a measure of facility population flow.

Juveniles may be committed to a facility as part of a court-ordered disposition or they may be detained prior to adjudication or after adjudication while awaiting disposition or placement elsewhere. In addition, a small proportion of juveniles may be voluntarily admitted in lieu of adjudication as part of a diversion.

Because detention stays tend to be short compared with commitment placements, detained juveniles represent a much larger share of population flow data than of 1-day count data.

Juveniles held in adult facilities. CJRP does not capture data on juveniles held in adult prisons or jails; therefore, in the CJRP data, juveniles placed in juvenile facilities by criminal courts represent an unknown proportion of juveniles incarcerated by criminal courts.

Juveniles held in drug treatment or mental health facilities. CJRP does not include facilities exclusively intended for drug or mental health treatment even though such facilities may house some offenders. There may, however, be numerous juveniles in residential placement captured by CJRP that were receiving such treatment.

The CJRP reference date is generally the fourth Wednesday in October. However, a set of unforseen circumstances prevented the 2005 mailout from taking place in October of that year. The census date for that wave of data collection was in February 2006. The census reference dates are listed below:

• October 29, 1997
• October 27, 1999
• October 24, 2001
• October 22, 2003
• February 22, 2006