What Crimes Do Juveniles Commit the Most: Trends and Consequences

The crimes juveniles commit most often in the United States are simple assault and larceny-theft, with shoplifting driving most of the theft numbers. In 2020, law enforcement made an estimated 70,940 juvenile arrests for simple assault, far more than any other single offense category.¹ Property offenses as a group still generate a huge share of juvenile cases, and a smaller slice comes from drug and alcohol violations and from status offenses, which are acts that are only illegal because the person is a minor.

In 2020, agencies made roughly 424,300 arrests of people under 18, a 38 percent drop from the year before and about half the total from five years earlier.² By the time cases reached juvenile courts in 2021, person offenses made up 37 percent of the delinquency caseload, property offenses 30 percent, public order offenses 22 percent, and drug offenses 11 percent.³

Property Crimes

Property offenses are the taking or damaging of someone else’s belongings without force or direct confrontation. Three charges account for most juvenile property arrests. In 2019, FBI data recorded 57,391 juvenile arrests for larceny-theft, 20,860 for vandalism, and 13,161 for burglary.⁴

Larceny-theft among juveniles overwhelmingly means shoplifting, though it also covers things like taking a classmate’s phone from a locker. Vandalism includes graffiti, broken car windows, keyed vehicles, and damage to school property. Burglary involves entering a building without permission intending to commit a crime inside, usually theft. Property offenses still accounted for about 132,300 cases in juvenile courts in 2021.³ They generally carry lighter consequences than violent offenses, but they can trigger restitution orders requiring the juvenile or their parents to repay victims.

Violent Offenses

Simple assault is by far the most common violent charge filed against juveniles. Aggravated assault followed with 19,140 arrests in 2020, and robbery with 12,000.¹ The gap between simple and aggravated assault is enormous, which reflects the reality that most juvenile violence involves fights and minor altercations rather than weapons or serious injury.

The FBI defines simple assault as an attack or attempted attack with no weapon and no serious injury, including acts like intimidation and hazing.⁵ Aggravated assault involves either a weapon or an attack severe enough to risk serious bodily harm. Robbery is theft accomplished through force or the threat of force, which separates it from shoplifting or burglary because the victim is directly confronted. Person offense cases made up roughly 163,000 of the delinquency cases handled by juvenile courts in 2021,³ and they are much more likely than property offenses to result in formal court processing rather than diversion.

Drug and Alcohol Offenses

Drug and alcohol violations accounted for about 11 percent of the juvenile court caseload in 2021, or roughly 46,300 cases.³ The most frequent charges involve possession of marijuana, underage alcohol possession, and possession of other controlled substances. Typical penalties include fines, substance education programs, community service, or probation, with the specifics depending on state and local law.

One trap worth flagging. Federal law requires states to enforce zero-tolerance rules for underage drivers, treating a blood alcohol concentration of 0.02 percent or higher as driving under the influence for anyone under 21.⁶ A teenager who drives after a single drink can face DUI consequences that an adult with the same blood alcohol level would not.

Status Offenses

Status offenses are acts that are only illegal because of the person’s age. The five main categories are truancy, running away from home, curfew violations, underage drinking, and being ungovernable, meaning beyond a parent’s control.⁷ Truancy is skipping school without a valid excuse and without parental knowledge. Curfew violations happen when a minor is found in a public place during restricted hours set by local ordinance, usually at night.

Status offenses are handled differently from delinquency offenses. Federal law generally prohibits states from locking up status offenders in secure detention or correctional facilities, with narrow exceptions for juveniles who violate a valid court order and those who violate federal or state handgun laws.⁸ Consequences typically run toward fines, counseling, community service, and programs targeting whatever is driving the behavior.

Juvenile Crime Has Been Falling for Decades

Any snapshot of juvenile offending needs context, because the overall trend has been downward for roughly thirty years. Youth arrests for violent crime in 2020 were 78 percent below the 1994 peak and about half the number from a decade earlier.² Property crime arrests dropped 83 percent after 2008.⁹ By 2020, people under 18 accounted for just 6 percent of all violent crime arrests nationally.

That decline is also why person offenses now outrank property offenses in the court caseload. Property arrests fell faster than person arrests, so the mix shifted even though juveniles are not committing more violence than they used to. Murder is the one offense that bucked the steady drop. Youth murder arrests bottomed out in 2012, climbed 31 percent through 2018, then dipped slightly through 2020, but even that higher number stayed 75 percent below the 1993 peak.²

What Happens After a Juvenile Is Arrested

Most juvenile arrests never produce a formal court record. When police arrest a minor, they first decide whether to handle the matter in-house (often with a warning and release to parents) or refer the case to juvenile court. About 25 percent of juvenile arrests in 2019 were handled by police and released without any court referral.¹⁰

Cases that reach the court go through an intake screening by a probation officer or prosecutor, who decides whether to dismiss, handle the case informally, or file a formal petition. Informal handling often takes the form of a consent decree, a written agreement under which the juvenile accepts conditions like community service or counseling, with dismissal to follow if they comply. When a formal petition is filed, the case proceeds to an adjudicatory hearing, the juvenile system’s equivalent of a trial, decided by a judge rather than a jury in most jurisdictions. In 2021, 48 percent of petitioned cases ended in an adjudication of delinquency.³ After adjudication, the judge holds a separate disposition hearing. In 2019, 65 percent of adjudicated cases resulted in formal probation and 27 percent in placement in a residential facility.¹⁰

When a Juvenile Case Moves to Adult Court

Every state has laws allowing or requiring certain juvenile cases to be prosecuted in adult criminal court, and the stakes change sharply when that happens. A juvenile tried as an adult faces adult sentencing, an adult criminal record, and incarceration in adult facilities. Transfer typically happens through one of four mechanisms:

Statutory exclusion, where state law automatically routes certain serious offenses like murder to adult court.
Judicial waiver, where a juvenile court judge transfers the case after weighing the offense, the juvenile’s history, and the prospects for rehabilitation.
Prosecutorial discretion, where the prosecutor can choose between juvenile and adult court for some offense categories.
Once-an-adult-always-an-adult rules, which require any future offenses to be prosecuted in adult court after a prior adult prosecution, regardless of severity.

The specific triggers and age thresholds vary considerably by state, but murder and serious violent felonies are the charges most commonly subject to automatic exclusion from juvenile court.

Juvenile Records Are Not Automatically Erased

A juvenile adjudication is not technically a conviction, but treating it as consequence-free is a mistake. Federal law protects the confidentiality of juvenile records and prohibits releasing information in response to employment applications, license requests, or other civil inquiries. Responses to those inquiries must be the same as for someone who was never involved in a delinquency proceeding.¹¹

Those protections have limits. Federal law allows disclosure of juvenile records to other courts, law enforcement agencies investigating crimes, treatment facilities, agencies conducting national security inquiries, and victims of the offense.¹¹ State laws vary widely on who else can see juvenile records, and some states allow background check companies to report juvenile adjudications for certain serious offenses, which can surface during college, housing, and job screenings.

Most states allow juvenile records to be sealed or expunged, but eligibility rules differ. Common requirements include reaching a minimum age (often 18 or 21), waiting a set period after completing court supervision, and having no subsequent criminal involvement. About 35 states define expungement as the physical destruction of the record; others seal the record without destroying it. Some states exclude serious felony-level adjudications from eligibility entirely. Filing for expungement or sealing as soon as a juvenile becomes eligible is one of the most valuable steps a family can take.

Parents Can Be On the Hook Too

Parents can face both civil and criminal liability for their children’s offenses. Nearly every state has a law making parents financially responsible for property damage caused by their minor children, though the maximum recovery amounts vary. A handful of states impose no cap, while most set a ceiling typically ranging from several thousand to tens of thousands of dollars.¹²

Some states also require parents to reimburse the cost of detaining or treating their child, pay court costs, or cover restitution the child cannot pay.¹² Parents can also be charged under contributing-to-the-delinquency-of-a-minor statutes, which exist in most states and impose an affirmative duty to exercise reasonable supervision. Those charges can carry fines and, in some jurisdictions, jail time.

1
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Estimated Number of Youth Arrests
2
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Trends in Youth Arrests for Violent Crimes
3
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Delinquency Cases in Juvenile Court 2021
4
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Table 36
5
Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI UCR Offense Definitions
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 23 USC 161 – Operation of Motor Vehicles by Intoxicated Minors
7
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Status Offenses
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 34 USC 11133 – State Plans
9
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Arrests of Youth Declined Through 2020
10
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Juvenile Justice System Structure and Process Case Flow Diagram
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 5038 – Use of Juvenile Records
12
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Parental Responsibility Laws