The Arizona Criminal Justice Commission conducts a statewide survey that is designed to measure the prevalence and frequency of substance abuse by youth, as well as their attitudes toward substance abuse. The Commission’s Statistical Analysis Center conducts a biennial Arizona Youth Survey. This survey is administered to a statewide sample of 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students attending public and charter middle and high schools throughout Arizona. This report provides a comprehensive statewide perspective on the data obtained through this significant statewide survey effort. Participating school and district officials also received school and district-specific data in the form of individualized reports to aid in local planning strategies and program development.

This report summarizes findings from the Arizona Youth Survey administered to 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students during Spring 2010. The survey was designed to assess school safety, adolescent substance use, antisocial behavior, youth gambling, and the risk and protective factors that predict these adolescent problem behaviors. All schools in Arizona are eligible to participate in the survey, and recruitment efforts were successful in obtaining participation by schools in all of Arizona's 15 counties.

This report summarizes all findings from the Arizona Youth Survey administered to 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students during Spring 2010. The results for your county are presented along with comparisons to the results for the state of Arizona. The survey was designed to assess school safety, adolescent substance use, antisocial behavior and the risk and protective factors that predict these adolescent problem behaviors. All schools in Arizona are eligible to participate in the survey and recruitment efforts were successful in obtaining participation by schools in all of the 15 counties.

The Arizona Criminal Justice Commission is a statutorily authorized entity mandated to carry out various coordinating, monitoring and reporting functions regarding the administration and management of criminal justice programs in Arizona. The ACJC was created in 1982 to serve as a resource and service organization for Arizona's 480 criminal justice agencies on a myriad of issues ranging from drugs, gangs, victim compensation and assistance to criminal record improvement initiatives. The ACJC works on behalf of the criminal justice agencies in Arizona to facilitate information and data exchange among statewide agencies by establishing and maintaining criminal justice information archives, monitoring new and continuing legislation relating to criminal justice issues, gathering information, and researching existing criminal justice programs.

Annual report on the Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance Formula Grant Program activities. Many valuable and productive drug, gang and violent crime prevention activities are funded and conducted throughout Arizona by local towns, cities, counties and the State, operating as coordinated, partnership efforts with projects supported by Formula Drug Grant program funds. These Annual Reports provide summary information on projects receiving funds from the Formula Grant Program for the period beginning July 1 and ending June 30.

The quality of jobs in the United States became a national concern in the 1980s after a long period of losses of relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs and gains of frequently low-paying service jobs. National job quality remains a concern today, as witnessed by the debate in the 2004 presidential campaign. The overall average wage is a measure of prosperity or well-being, but is not in itself a measure of job quality since job quality is just one of several factors — including cost of living, productivity, and desirability of an area — that affect the overall average wage. Little information on these factors is available by state. Adjusting for job quality reduces the state-by-state variation in wages. However, even after adjusting for job quality, the average wage still varies substantially by state.

The long-term trend toward lower-quality jobs in the United States continued between 2001 and 2004. Industrial job quality fell 1.6 percent nationally between 2001 and 2004. The decrease in occupational job quality was not quite as great at 0.9 percent. Thus, overall U.S. job quality dropped 2.5 percent during the three years, causing the U.S. average wage to be 2.5 percent less than it otherwise would have been. Arizona’s job quality fell between 2001 and 2004 at a pace worse than the national average. Relative to the national average, the industrial and occupational job mixes each slipped a bit more than 0.3 percent during the three years, for an overall decline of 0.7 percent. In Arizona, job quality in 2004 was 2.0 percent below the national average, but Arizona ranked 23rd among all states.

Available data on the cost of living indicate that living costs in Arizona are close to the national average — thus, the state’s lower-than-average wages are not offset by low living costs. No productivity data exist for Arizona. Worker productivity in Arizona could be below the national average due to lesser investments in physical or human capital, which would result in lower wages. Labor market supply and demand factors are a likely cause of the low wages in Arizona. A substantial number of people seem willing to move to Arizona and accept a substandard wage in exchange for perceived qualitative advantages to living in Arizona, primarily climate.

Arizona is one of the states in which the high-wage end of the employment distribution provides a more favorable impression of its job quality than that based on all employment. Thus, Arizona’s subpar job quality is not due to a scarcity of high-wage jobs, but instead results from lesser job quality in the remainder of the employment distribution. In particular, Arizona has an above-average share of very low-paying jobs that serve tourists and seasonal residents. In turn, the low overall average wage in Arizona — 7 percent less than the U.S. average — primarily results from factors other than job quality. The average wage in Arizona is less than the U.S. average in the vast majority of industries and occupations, both high- and low-paying.