Juvenile delinquency is down across the nation, state and locally, and it’s related to a new perspective on juvenile justice that focuses on alternative ways to discipline youth.
The number of arrests of U.S. children younger than 18 has been decreasing for the last decade; between 2002 and 2011 there was a 31 percent decrease in the number of juvenile arrests nationally.
Indiana has seen a 29 percent decrease in annual juvenile case fillings from 2002 to 2012, and that number continued to decline in 2013. The local trend follows suit, with a 37.4 percent decline in juvenile case filings for Howard County over that same decade, and a 55.5 percent drop in Miami County, according to the 2015 Kids Count report released Monday. Of Indiana’s 92 counties, 72 had fewer delinquency cases in 2012 than in 2006.