“New Report Reveals Sexual Victimization Rates in U.S. Juvenile Facilities “by James Swift
To read this article on the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange website, click here.
The United States Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) has released a new report detailing rates of sexual victimization in the nation’s juvenile facilities. The report, incorporating data from the 2012 National Survey of Youth in Custody, found that nearly one in 10 young people in state-operated or state-contracted juvenile facilities reported at least one sexual victimization incident last year. Approximately 2.5 percent of youth in juvenile facilities reported victimization at the hands of fellow inmates, the report states, while 7.7 percent of survey takers said they had experienced sexual abuse from facility staffers. Of the 7.7 percent, 3.5 percent of young people in juvenile facilities reported being coerced into sexual contact by staff or other facility personnel.