Race and Processing of Juvenile Offenders

Research on Racial Disparities in Processing

Pope and Feyerherm (1990a, 1990b) are often cited in the juvenile justice literature for their review of early studies on the role of race in the handling of juvenile cases. They found that more than 70 percent of the research identifies race as a determinant in the outcome of a case. Further, both qualitative and quantitative research yields similar findings of disproportionality—system biases can occur at any stage. The net effect of the Pope and Feyerherm report was a demand that states participating in the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act explore the issue of minority overrepresentation.

Addressing the issue of race, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has provided funding to several states to examine the role of race in the processing of juveniles. The result of each study has yielded findings of race discrimination or a race effect in the disposition of juvenile cases. Georgia and Pennsylvania were among the first of many states to receive funding from the OJJDP. In both studies, there were patterns of discrimination based on race.

Not surprisingly, in some of the funded studies, there has been much debate about research methods that were employed and the terms that were used in the technical reports. For example, in a study conducted in Missouri, researchers disagreed on appropriate phraseology—specifically, whether to use the phrase “race effect” or “apparent race discrimination.” The Missouri study, like others, refers frequently to findings of a race effect, which was one way to politically and politely charge findings or patterns of racial discrimination without offending state agencies. The politics of funded research on this topic are discussed later in this entry.

Other findings from Missouri, such as the notion of “justice by geography” (Feld, 1991), reveal that black youth were more likely than any other group to be detained in urban areas. In rural areas, the researchers found that black juveniles, compared with their white counterparts, were at greater risk for removal from the home and referral to a residential program. In sum, two very different justice systems in Missouri emerged, one urban and the other rural. In rural parts of the state, juveniles were afforded the least number of procedural safeguards. More generally, future [Page 314]researchers are encouraged to further explore racial disparities based on geography.

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