Survey of Sexual Victimization in Juvenile Justice Facilities, United States, 2016

The Survey of Sexual Victimization (SSV) is part of BJS's National Prison Rape Statistics Program, which gathers mandated data on the incidence and prevalence of sexual victimization in adult correctional and juvenile justice facilities, under the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA; P.L. 108-79). This is an administrative data collection based on allegations of sexual victimization by other adjudicated juveniles or staff that are reported to authorities. The collection includes an enumeration of allegations and substantiated incidents reported to juvenile justice systems operated by states and the District of Columbia and tribal juvenile facilities and a sample of local and private juvenile justice facilities.
In 2016, correctional administrators reported 3,740 allegations of sexual victimization. This total contains all allegations of five types of victimization measured by the SSV - youth-on-youth nonconsensual sexual acts, abusive sexual contacts, and sexual harassment as well as staff-on-youth sexual misconduct and sexual harassment. Of those allegations, 738 were substantiated after investigation.