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This page is devoted to the Florida
Department of Juvenile Justice's "electronic release" of
data on delinquency referrals. The Delinquency Profile
examines Florida's juvenile justice system at several
points: Intake, Disposition, Judicial/Non-Judicial Handling,
Court-Diversion programs, Juvenile Probation, Residential
Commitment, and Transfers to the Adult Court System. In
addition to statewide figures, the Profile makes it possible
to access data broken down by judicial circuit and county
level via a Windows point-and-click interface. Data is
presented in both tabular and graphic format, by offense
type, race, age and sex. The Profile uses data from the
Juvenile Justice Information System (JJIS). Available below
is a review of the methodology used to compile the data in
the Profile.
Though published for many years, each
Profile covers only a five-year period, ending in the most
recent fiscal year. Rather than posting all the previous
editions, we are posting only the most recent version
(2010-11) and the edition released five years ago (2005-06).
This allows the user to view a total of ten years data for
any location. Should earlier versions of the Profile be
needed, please contact the report’s author (Nathan Epps) via
e-mail (Nathan.Epps@djj.state.fl.us).
Installation Instructions:
Users with high-speed connections to the Internet can
install the package directly, but if this is not possible,
simply download the installation file to your local
computer, taking care to note where the file is being saved
(desktop or specific file directory). Once the download is
complete, locate the file on the local computer and
double-click on the file and follow the instructions for
setup as they appear on-screen. This installation process
need only be done once for each Profile, since a new icon
should be created on your desktop by the installation
package, and it will be listed in the computer’s
Start/Programs menu. In the future the user need only
double-click on the desktop icon or use the Start menu to
start the package. The Profile may take a while to open, as
it is a large data file. Once the file is open, a blue
screen with a map of Florida will appear. Click on the START
button next to the map of Florida that appears on this
screen to continue (all selections in the Profile should be
made with single, not double-clicks). Click on the “Help and
Notes on the Data” button that appears on the second screen
for more detailed information on the contents of the package
and instructions on how to use the Profile.
Usage Note 1: Users of the
Office 2000 version of Excel may need to adjust the macro
security setting in Excel. If you get an error message that
the macros have been disabled, do the following: from the
Excel menu select Tools > Macro > Security and then choose
Medium (it will be necessary after making this change to
re-start Excel before running the Profile). This change
allows the user to choose whether or not to enable macros.
For the Profile to function the macros MUST be enabled.
Usage Note 2: Users of the
Office 2007 and later versions of Excel may need to adjust
the macro security setting in Excel. If you get an error
message stating that there is a “Security Warning: some
active content has been disabled” do the following. Select
the options button to the right of this warning: under Macro
select “enable this content” and click OK. This change
allows the user to choose whether or not to enable macros.
For the Profile to function the macros MUST be enabled.
Usage Note 3: Users of
Office 2010, you’ll probably default to a “non-editable”
opening screen upon opening the Profile, meaning that you
can’t start the Profile by clicking on the START button next
to the map of Florida. Instead, click on the link in the
Protected View bar, shown here:
The “Office has detected a problem with this
file….”is actually a link; click on that link to move to the
information pane, part of which can be seen below.
Click on the “Edit Anyway” button, and the
image below should apear.
 Click
on the Enable Content button, and the screen shown at the
right should open, where the “Start” button can be clicked
to begin using the Profile. It should not be necessary to go
through this process more than once.
Usage Note 4: As can be seen, old editions
of Excel and the increasing demands of navigating through
the file protections designed in the software package have
made accessing the data more and more complex. Fortunately,
the technology available via the Internet has made it
possible for the Department to begin migrating reports such
as the Profile to another, friendlier format (Tableau),
accessible entirely via the Internet. Check the Department’s
website frequently for updates on this new venue for data
access.
Methodology: The source of the data used to
compile the Profile is the Juvenile Justice Information
System (JJIS), a database managed by the Department of
Juvenile Justice. Two units of analysis are used in the
report, "referrals" and "youths referred";. The number of
"referrals"; is determined by selecting the most serious
offense reported received on JJIS for any individual youth
on a specific date. If the same juvenile is referred for
several offenses on the same date, these would be counted
together as one referral, with the most serious offense on
that date used for analysis. If that juvenile is referred
for one or more offenses on another date during the year it
would be counted as another referral. The number of "youths"
is determined by selecting the most serious offense for any
specific offender logged on JJIS during a fiscal year.
The Profile is produced by Nathan Epps at
the Bureau of Research & Planning of the Florida Department
of Juvenile Justice. Questions about the data or
installation of the Profile should be directed to Nathan by
e-mail at Nathan.Epps@djj.state.fl.us,
or by phone at (850) 921-0986.
The data may be freely quoted in grant
proposals and elsewhere Should a citation be needed, list:
2010-11 Profile of Delinquency, by the Bureau of Research &
Planning, Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.
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