The purpose of this Grand Rapids Juvenile Offense Index (GRJOI) is to provide a baseline and four year trend analysis of juvenile offense in Grand Rapids. This report describes the scope, frequency and circumstances of juvenile offenses recorded by the Grand Rapids Police Department. As with previous GRJOI reports, this information is intended to provide the community with the information necessary to track outcomes for children by neighborhood and promote dialogue to inform policy and practice for the safety and well-being of Grand Rapid’s youth. This work is the result of a collaborative effort with the Community Research Institute, Our Community’s Children, and the Grand Rapids Police Department.

• A 19% decrease in the number of youth involved in all offenses from 2006 to 2009.
• A 25% decrease in the number of all types of offenses from 2006 to 2009.
• Status Offenses and Family/Domestic Incidents make up the majority (57%) of police contacts with youth.
• After-school and mid-evening hours remain prime times for youth offenses.
• Juvenile involvement in offenses increases dramatically between the ages of 12 and 14 across all four years of the study.

This report provides the community with data and information on the juvenile offenses committed in Grand Rapids from 2006 to 2009. The value of a multiple year report is the ability to highlight patterns in the data over time. The trend data in this report indicates a decline in the number of unique youth committing offenses and the number of unique offenses committed in the City of Grand Rapids. This trend is noteworthy and suggests the need for a deeper analysis of our community and neighborhood efforts to determine the overall impact of interventions on children’s outcomes – in this case, on juvenile delinquency. It is critical that this decline in juvenile delinquency persist. How and in what way we can further this decline should be discussed within neighborhoods using the data available as a starting point.