Juvenile Justice, Racial Differences

Nature of the Problem: A Racial Analysis

The term ethnic minority refers to African Americans, Latinos, Asians and Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans. Though DMC occurs in each of [Page 621]these groups, the greatest overrepresentation in the juvenile justice system is found among African American youth (Conley, 1994; Pope & Feyerherm, 1995; Wordes, Bynam, & Corley, 1994). In arrests made for 26 out of 29 offenses documented by the FBI, including violent offenses and property crimes, Black youth are disproportionately represented compared with European American youth (Poe-Yamagata & Jones, 2000). In 1997, though Black youth comprised approximately 15% of the youth population, they accounted for 26% of all juvenile arrests and 44% of arrests for violent crimes (e.g., murder, robbery, and assault) (U.S. Department of Justice, 1999). Moreover, an African American youth with no prior record charged with a particular offense was 6 times more likely to be incarcerated in a public facility than a European American youth with an identical record charged with the same crime (Krisberg et al., 1992). Much less is known about the extent of Latino overrepresentation in the system due to the fact that members of this group are often categorized as “White” in the juvenile justice data (Poe-Yamagata & Jones, 2000). Nonetheless, the limited data available suggest a disproportionate number of Latino youth in the system (Krisberg et al., 1992). Overrepresentation has also been reported for Asian and Native American youth (U.S. Department of Justice, 1999). However, these groups are often aggregated into a single category and account for only 5% of juveniles currently in the system. Thus, it is believed that the extent of disproportionate minority confinement is underreported in most states.

...