DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
8 comments:
LMAO. This is so true!!
Looting is the new entitlement.
Look at what they are trying to do. They are trying to make it illegal to arrest a criminal if the criminal is black
I would expect nothing less
I agree 6:05, looks like thats where this is going.
Does not surprise me one bit if he would actually do this.
You are absolutely correct 6:05. It's already started in schools. He is a "study."
Part I
DISPROPORTIONATE MINORITY CONTACT
Introduction
The juvenile justice system must be fair and must be perceived as fair in order to be effective.
Yet it has long been the case that youth of color have much more frequent contact with the justice
system than white youth, a disparity that is not fully explained by differences in delinquency. In
nearly all juvenile justice systems youth of color also remain in the system longer than white
youth. While black youth account for 17% of the youth population, they represent 28% of
juvenile arrests, 37% of the detained population, 38% of those in secure placement, and 58% of
youth committed to state adult prison.1
Causes and Correlates of Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC)
Research points to several contributors to DMC. While any one of these contributors could lead
to DMC on its own, it is more often the case that multiple contributors work simultaneously to
increase representation of youth of color in the juvenile justice system. The most commonly
identified factors are:
o Selective enforcement of delinquent behavior;2
o Differential opportunities for treatment;3
o Institutional racism;4
o Indirect effects of socioeconomic factors;5
o Differential offending;6
o Biased risk assessment instruments;7
o Differential administrative practices;8
o Unequal access to effective legal counsel;9
and
o Legislative policies that disparately impact youth of color.10
In addition to these contributors to DMC, some explanation for the persistence of DMC has
recently been attributed to well-intentioned misuse of the juvenile justice system to meet the
needs of youth who would otherwise not receive services such as mental health treatment.11
Detention for the purpose of accessing services is not the intended purpose of the juvenile justice
system and leads to many long-lasting collateral consequences for youth.
Legislative and administrative policies such as school-related “zero tolerance” policies can create
additional drivers for the racial and ethnic disparity in the juvenile justice system.12 These
policies are more likely to exist in urban low-income school districts that include large numbers
of youth of color.13 This process of criminalizing school infractions through zero tolerance
policies has had an especially negative impact on youth of color.14
Policies and practices that have a disparate impact on youth of color, even though they may be
unintentional, have long-standing consequences at the individual and community level. Contact
with the justice system reduces options for education, housing, and employment, and also
weakens the stability of communities of color and results in a deepening of the divide between
whites and nonwhites.15
Models for Success
In California, we recognize that reducing racial and ethnic disparities is a
uniquely local issue. However, in California we also realize that without
guidance, local jurisdictions are unclear how to tackle the issue of racial and
ethnic overrepresentation. A committee that is designated exclusively to
reducing disparities is necessary to provide critical guidance and support for
local jurisdictions in their work to reduce disparities.
-Shalinee Hunter, California State DMC Coordinator
DISPROPORTIONATE MINORITY CONTACT
Part II
Eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system is indeed a daunting task,
but modest successes have been observed in reducing unwarranted disparities for youth of color.
The sharing of these successes is a critical component of DMC work so that effective strategies
can be replicated in similarly situated environments. Promising strategies to reduce DMC share a
number of traits. First, they have community support; they tend to originate from local
community concerns and include stakeholders from the community who have been affected by
minority over-representation. 16 The W. Haywood Burns Institute’s work with system
stakeholders in Baltimore, Maryland led to the development of policies that ultimately lowered
the number of youth who were held in secure placement for failure to appear in court. Once a
system was implemented to remind youth of an upcoming court date, the secure detention of
African American youth dropped by almost 50%.17
Second, the strategies consistently rely on data from a variety of sources to identify where efforts
should be undertaken and whether these need to be modified over time.18 For example, if it is
determined that referrals to the police from school-based incidents are racially disproportionate,
this could mean that school-based law enforcement strategies are contributing to DMC. For
instance, the DMC workgroup in Peoria County, Illinois examined data from school referrals to
the police and determined that the county’s DMC was aggravated by school discipline policies
that had a disparate impact on youth of color. Peoria County successfully reduced
disproportionate referrals of youth of color to the juvenile justice system by working with the
school system to strengthen school-based conflict resolution protocols.19
Third, effective strategies are transparent about both successes and setbacks, and acknowledge
that important lessons can be learned from both. And finally, DMC workgroups are committed to
a long-term investment in lowering DMC that relies on evidence-based practices and followthrough
with sustainable initiatives. The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention
Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) has been working in over 100 sites for more than 15 years to reform
juvenile justice systems through supporting detention alternatives. As a result of these efforts, the
average daily population of youth detained has dropped as much as 65% in some jurisdictions,
including a sizable reduction of detention for youth of color. As of 2007, there were 873 fewer
youth of color in detention in JDAI sites compared to before JDAI was working in these
jurisdictions, while in locations without JDAI investment, the numbers of minority youth in
detention have continued to increase.20 DMC must remain a priority in order for communities to
observe sustained drops in overrepresentation.
I wonder what the statistics are on Asian and Indians (not meaning native Americans)?
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