"In 1953, a U.S. Senate subcommittee was formed to investigate the causes of juvenile delinquency in America and to assess the effectiveness of current laws designed to combat what the public was told had become a national epidemic. Statistically, juvenile crime was on the rise in post–World War II America, but as historian James Gilbert suggests, the increase may have been due to the lack of a uniform definition of juvenile delinquency by the FBI and state and local law enforcement agencies. For example, whether an underage teen caught drinking and/or breaking curfew was branded a “JD” depended on the state and county where he or she lived."