It first presents national estimates of petitioned and nonpetitioned delinquency cases handled by courts with juvenile jurisdiction. Next, national estimates of petitioned status offense cases are presented. Together, these sections provide a detailed national portrait of juvenile court cases, including the offenses involved, sources of referral, detention practices, and dispositions ordered. A description of the statistical procedure used to generate these estimates is presented in the "Methods" section. A glossary of terms is provided, since few terms in the field of juvenile justice have widely accepted definitions. The appendix presents the number of delinquency, status offense, and dependency cases handled by juvenile courts in 1996, by State and county. Table notes at the end of the appendix indicate the source of the data and the unit of count. The report indicates that in 1996 courts with juvenile jurisdiction handled an estimated 1,757,600 delinquency cases, a 3-percent increase over the 1995 caseload. Caseloads increased steadily between 1987 and 1996 across all four major offense categories: person, property drug offenses, and public order offenses. In 1996 U.S. juvenile courts petitioned and formally disposed an estimated 162,000 status offense cases, a 101-percent increase over 1987. Caseloads generally increased between 1987 and 1996 across all four offense categories: runaway, truancy, ungovernable, and liquor offenses. 86 tables and 26 figures