2003 Maine Marks
Indicator: 50 - Youth Arrests
Fully Developed

Why This Is Important

Families and parents pass on to their children values about what is right and wrong. These values are reinforced, or not, by a child’s peers and his or her community. How often young people are arrested is an indicator of how well parents, families and the community have raised a child to act responsibly, according to the rules of the community.

 

Where We Stand

After rising during the first half of the 1990’s, the juvenile arrest rate dropped after 1996. In 2001, Maine had a rate of 67.5 arrests per 1,000 children aged 10-17. The 2002 Maine Crime & Justice Data Book provides additional information on juvenile arrests through 2001. In that year, males accounted for 69% of all juvenile arrests, and 73% of the arrests involved adolescents over age 14.


Data Sources and Context

The data source is the Maine Kids Count 2003 Data Book, which analyzes data from the Maine Department of Public Safety’s Uniform Crime Reports. Numbers include all arrests of children aged 10-17 for crimes including manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, forgery and counterfeiting, fraud, stolen property, vandalism, possession of a weapon, prostitution, sex offenses, drug and alcohol related offenses, violation of liquor laws, driving under the influence, drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and curfew and loitering law violations. The annual arrest data counts all arrests of youth for offenses during the calendar year, including repeated offenses by the same individual. Rate is the number of arrests divided by the estimated number of 10-17 year-olds in a calendar year, using data prepared by the Office of Data, Research, and Vital Statistics. The Kids Count Data Book is available on-line at http://www.mekids.org.

The 2002 Maine Crime & Justice Databook is a product of the Maine Statistical Analysis Center, a cooperative project of the Maine Department of Corrections and the Institute for Public Sector Innovation at the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School. The Databook is available online at http://muskie.usm.maine.edu/justiceresearch/current/reports.htm.