Indefensible: The Lack of Juvenile Defense Data

This StateScan publication is the 5th in a series that distills important knowledge from NCJJ’s new Juvenile Justice Geography, Policy, Practice & Statistics website. The author, Andrew Wachter, organizes results from an online search for available juvenile defense data. This publication highlights the limited amount of data available, suggests possible reasons for the lack of data, and highlights examples from a few states that report comprehensively. This original analysis illustrates that very few states collect and report data to monitor or evaluate the performance of the juvenile defense field; rather most simply report to describe a work product for public defender agencies.

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