Zero Tolerance Policies

Disproportionate Minority Confinement and Contact

In the late 1980s, the problem of disproportionate minority confinement in juvenile justice systems throughout the United States was brought to national attention by the Coalition for Juvenile Justice. In the 1988 Amendments to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (JJDP) Act of 1974, Congress required that in order to qualify for federal funding to assist in the development of programming for youth, states must take steps to address DMC. Specifically, each state must assess to what degree DMC exists, as well as develop efforts to reduce the proportion of youth detained or confined in secure juvenile detention facilities, secure juvenile residential correctional facilities, adult jails, and police lockups who are members of minority groups if their representation exceeds the proportion of such groups in the general population. For purposes of this requirement, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has defined minority populations as African Americans, American Indians, Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics.

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (JJDP) Act of 2002 modified the DMC requirement of the original 1974 Act as follows: “addressing juvenile delinquency prevention efforts and system improvement efforts designed to reduce, without establishing or requiring numerical standards or [Page 922]quotas, the disproportionate number of juvenile members of minority groups who come into contact with the juvenile justice system.” This change broadens the DMC initiative from disproportionate minority “confinement” to disproportionate minority “contact” by requiring the examination of possible disproportionate representation of minority youth at all decision points along the juvenile justice system continuum. The general premise is that racial disproportionality throughout the juvenile justice system is a result of practices that begin with a minority child's first encounter with the police, as disparity tends to be most pronounced at the stages of arrest and referral to court.

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