| Organization: | Office of the Child Advocate |
|---|---|
| Date published: | November 2, 2020 |
| Last updated: | January 13, 2023 |
Introduction
Welcome to the Office of the Child Advocate’s interactive data website on the Massachusetts juvenile justice system. The purpose of this resource is to give policymakers, juvenile justice stakeholders, researchers, and members of the public greater access to data across the variety of entities and processing points that make up the state’s juvenile justice system.
The links in the table of contents below will connect you to information and data at different processing points in the juvenile justice system. The data visualizations you will see on these pages are interactive. You can explore how the juvenile justice population breaks down by race, gender, age, geography and offense type using the filters on the visualizations. You can also download the underlying data by clicking the “download” icon under each visualization. (See About Massachusetts Juvenile Justice Data for more details on data availability and confidentiality protections.)
Background
The Office of the Child Advocate chairs the Juvenile Justice Policy and Data (JJPAD) Board, which was created by the Legislature in 2018 to evaluate Massachusetts’ juvenile justice system and make recommendations to improve outcomes. To ensure that the recommendations the JJPAD Board makes are grounded in data, the OCA and the JJPAD Board are working to improve the quality and availability of juvenile justice system data. This resource is part of that on-going effort.
To learn more about the JJPAD Board’s work on improving access to juvenile justice data, read the June 2019 and March 2022 reports.
Click here to read all JJPAD Board reports.
Table of Contents
- Overview of the Massachusetts juvenile justice system
- About Massachusetts juvenile justice data
- Youth diversion
- Youth arrests and overnight arrests admissions
- Initial complaints and filings with Juvenile Court
- Youth arraignments
- Youth pretrial proceedings, supervision and detention
- Youth dispositions (judgment) and sanctions (sentencing)
- Juvenile probation and commitments to DYS
- Post-commitment services
- Child Requiring Assistance filings
- Appendix: Massachusetts juvenile justice agencies
Contact
Phone
For all OCA phone lines hours are Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM (closed on State and Federal holidays)
Fax
Address
11th Floor
Boston, MA 02108