About the data
The data on this site comes from a variety of state juvenile justice entities. Data was collected by the Office of the Child Advocate (OCA) and analyzed by the OCA in partnership with the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) and the entities providing the data. Datasets for each visualization are available for download by selecting the "Download" icon (box with arrow pointing down) below each visualization.
Each entity makes its own determinations with regards to how data is categorized and reported. For example, agencies report data on race/ethnicity demographic breakdowns in different ways. Relevant information on how data has been categorized in a given dataset is included in the "Data Definitions" section of each page.
The confidentiality of juvenile interactions with the justice system is protected by law. As a result, individual-level data sets are not publicly available. Instead, data is presented in the aggregate, with options to break the data down in a variety of ways. To protect confidentiality, when a query produces a total of five or fewer individual instances, data are unreported in the given visualization. In some cases, data has been categorized into broader groups to allow for disaggregation while protecting confidentiality.
Unless otherwise indicated, data is presented as the number of separate instances at a given process point rather than the number of individual youth experiencing that process point. For example, a youth could be arrested multiple times in a given year; each arrest would appear in the arrest data set.
Juvenile justice entities in Massachusetts have been working to increase the amount and quality of data that can be reported in recent years. Each entity has chosen how many years of data to report on this website; some entities are able to report data over a longer time period than others. For more specific data from any state entities, please contact that agency's research department.
Data on this site will be updated at least annually, and more frequently for some data sets. Additional data sets will be added over time, as they become available.
If a visualization is not loading, it may be because it was recently updated. To refresh a page with visualizations try the following steps:
- Do a hard refresh of your browser
- Clear your cache
- Add "?n" to the end of the URL
For any questions about what is presented here, or to report any problems with these pages, please contact: kristine.polizzano@mass.gov
More Data
- For more information on how each Massachusetts juvenile justice entity reports their geography data, download this sheet.
- For more information on how each Massachusetts juvenile justice entity reports their offense type and severity data, download this sheet.
- For more information on all arrests in Massachusetts, visit the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security (EOPSS)'s crime statistics page.
- The Trial Court publishes a variety of data on their public data dashboard.
- Massachusetts Probation's Tableau page shares more caseload data for youth on probation.
- Click here to read all of the Department of Youth Services' reports
- For more information on offense categorization and guidelines, refer to Table 41 in Appendix B of Massachusetts Survey of Sentencing Practices.
- Check out Massachusetts Department of Public Health's website on the Social Determinants of health to compare health measures across Massachusetts communities.
-
Data on unintentional injuries, violence and drug use is sourced from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS). Developed in 1990, the YRBSS monitors health behaviors that contribute to the leading cause of death, disability and social problems among youth and adults in the United States. Conducted by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the YRBSS includes school-based surveys of representative samples of 9th through 12th grade students in public and private schools in the United States. Typically, the YRBSS is conducted during the spring of odd-numbered years and results are released in the summer of the following year. To learn more about the data click here.
-
Juvenile population data is sourced from Easy Access to Juvenile Populations (EAZAPOP), a data analysis tool available through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP)’s Statistical Briefing Book. The population estimates provided are derived from data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau and subsequently modified by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). To learn more about the data click here.
| Date published: | November 2, 2020 |
|---|---|
| Last updated: | November 2, 2020 |