Decomposing the Downward Trend in Referrals to the Oregon Juvenile Justice System

Abstract

Crime rates fell unexpectedly in the United States in the 1990s and have now been declining for over two decades. This paper takes a closer look at the downward trend in referrals to the Oregon juvenile justice system using county-level data for the period 1998 to 2009. Decomposition of referral rates by the race/ethnicity and gender of the offender, associated offense type, and county of jurisdiction reveals that the drop in referrals is systemic and not readily accounted for by policy shifts shown to impact crime in the existing literature.