Youth Justice Project
A DC Youth Justice Coalition
Data

DC's juvenile legal system, in numbers.

DC's juvenile legal system runs on numbers that the city does not consistently publish, contextualize, or interpret in public. We publish them here, with their sources, so anyone in DC can see the system as it actually operates.

92.7%
rearrested · 47.6% reconvicted
Among 124 young people who completed a DYRS commitment in 2018, 115 were rearrested during commitment or within the two-year follow-up period. In the same cohort, 70.2 percent had a new case papered and 47.6 percent had a new conviction or adjudication.
DC Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, Juvenile Recidivism: A 2018 Cohort Analysis, 2022, pp.17–18.
This combines arrests during commitment with arrests in the next two years. It is not a two-year post-release rate. Arrest, papering, and conviction are different measures.
86%
Black males, 2023 · ≈52% of DC youth
Black males made up 86 percent of young people committed to DYRS in 2023. As of May 2025, every young person committed to DYRS and held at the Youth Services Center was a Black male. Black young people made up about 52 percent of DC's youth population.
Council for Court Excellence, October 2025.
The 86 percent figure refers to Black males among all 2023 commitments; the 52 percent refers to all Black young people in DC. Those are different groups, so the comparison is stated, not compressed into a ratio.
57.6%
chronically absent
In school year 2024–25, 57.6 percent of students in grades nine through 12 across DC public and public charter schools missed at least 10 percent of the days in which they were enrolled.
Office of the State Superintendent of Education, 2024–25 Attendance Report.
Chronic absence includes excused and unexcused absences. It is not the same as chronic truancy.
3.16×
the likelihood of system involvement
In a 2020 statistical model, accruing the sample's average number of unexcused absences, 13.6, was associated with 3.16 times the likelihood of juvenile legal system involvement, holding the study's other measured factors constant.
DC Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, A Study of the Root Causes of Juvenile Justice System Involvement, November 2020, p.68.
This is an association from a statistical model, not proof that absences cause legal-system involvement. Structural conditions can affect both.
Also worth seeing

Three more numbers behind the system.

34.4/mo
youth-on-youth assaults at the Youth Services Center through August 2025, up from 19.4 per month in 2023.
Council for Court Excellence, October 2025.
8 vs 93
crossover youth DYRS and CFSA identified in FY2023, versus 93 found by an independent court-record analysis.
Office of the DC Auditor & Council for Court Excellence, A Broken Web, May 2024.
125 days
or longer is how long more than half of young people awaiting placement at YSC waited, from June 2022 through February 2025.
Council for Court Excellence, October 2025.
Representation works

The system's numbers are grim. Advocacy changes them.

When a young person has an education attorney in their corner, outcomes shift. These are 2024 results from coalition member School Justice Project, which represents court-involved DC students with disabilities. They are SJP's own program results, not coalition-wide outcomes and not a controlled comparison.

100%
of SJP clients released from incarceration re-enrolled in school within 30 days of release.
87%
of the 70 court hearings in which SJP advocated for clients reached a mitigated outcome.
94%
of clients were enrolled in an education program.
~450
young people and their families served in 2024.
Source: School Justice Project, 2024 Year-in-Review. SJP program results, not coalition-wide or citywide outcomes.
How to read this

What these numbers can and cannot tell you.

Every figure here is sourced to a public report or dataset, and the source's own methodology and caveats travel with the number. Racial-disparity figures show that DC's juvenile legal system falls hardest on Black young people, a pattern consistent across every dataset DC publishes. Ward-level numbers map where the system reaches into DC, not where blame lies. When two sources give different numbers for the same thing, we publish both and explain the difference.

Methodology

Where every number comes from.

Every statistic on this page is drawn from a primary government, auditor, court, or peer-reviewed source. We use the source's own definitions and reporting windows, and do not re-aggregate across sources unless the methodology is explicitly published. When a figure is calculated from a dataset rather than restated from a report, we say so and link the dataset. We update each statistic when its source publishes new data, and the most recent update date appears below. If you find an error, please write to us.

Last updated: June 2026