This article provides data about youth in the California Youth Authority (CYA) and compares and contrasts Asian and Pacific Islander (API) youth with other wards with regard to youth characteristics, commitment offenses, incarceration, parole, and discharge. The data shows that although API constituted 5% of the total population in February of 2002, some API ethnicities are vastly overrepresented in the CYA population and have had high levels of gang involvement. At the same time, API wards had the highest percentage with honorable discharges and the lowest percentage with a dishonorable discharge from CYA.

This article provides data about youth in the California Youth Authority (CYA) and compares and contrasts Asian and Pacific Islander (API) youth with other wards with regard to youth characteristics, commitment offenses, incarceration, parole, and discharge. The data shows that although API youth constituted 5% of the total population in February of 2002, some API ethnicities are vastly overrepresented in the CYA population and have had high levels of gang involvement. At the same time, API wards had the highest percentage with honorable discharges and the lowest percentage with dishonorable discharges from CYA.This Resource Paper presents statistical data on wards under the jurisdiction of the CYA 1 focusing on differences and similarities between API youth and the total population at CYA as well as to other racial groups. The National Council on Crime and Delinquency's (NCCD) previous work (Le et al. 2001a(Le et al. , 2001b found that although API youth generally had low arrest, adjudication, and incarceration rates as compared to other racial groups, when disaggregated by API ethnicity, differences within the group emerged. Some API ethnicities had arrest and out of home placement rates that were among the highest in the jurisdiction. The information in this Resource Paper provides additional insights by analyzing administrative data from California's juvenile correctional institutions.