JUVENILE SUSTAINED PETITIONS

This indicator reports the number and percent of juvenile petitions that are sustained. After a juvenile arrest, a referral is typically made by the arresting officer to the Probation Department for further processing. The probation officer decides whether a referral is dismissed, the juvenile is placed on informal probation or a petition will be sought for a formal court hearing. When a petition is sustained by the court, the juvenile becomes a ward of the court. A ward is either allowed to go home under the supervision of a probation officer or ordered for detention in a juvenile institution.

Sustained juvenile petitions are similar to an adult criminal conviction. They indicate where and what types of crimes are occurring among youth. Many agencies have a role to play in helping to meet California’s goal of rehabilitation for youth who have a sustained petition, including schools, social services agencies and community-based organizations. Knowledge about sustained juvenile petitions can help provide strategic direction to prevention, early intervention and rehabilitation efforts in Orange County.

• In 2017, there were 3,124 total juvenile petitions.1 Of these, 1,362 were sustained petitions (43.6%), a 48.7% decrease from 2013 (2,657).

• The rate of sustained petitions was 403 per 100,000 youth ages 10 to 17 years old in 2017, a 49.7% decrease from 2013 (800 per 100,000 youth).

• Sustained petitions were highest among youth 15 to 17 years old who received 89.3% of sustained petition decisions, followed by youth 12 to 14 years old (10.6%) and youth 11 years and younger (0.1%).

• When assessed by race and ethnicity, Hispanic youth (78.7%) had the most sustained petitions, followed by White (12.2%), Black (5.0%), Other (2.3%) and Asian (1.8%) youth in 2017.

• Across genders, the vast majority of sustained petitions were on juvenile males (82.8%), with juvenile females accounting for 17.2% of sustained petitions in 2017.