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   The Problem Of Overrepresentation Of Minority Youth In The Justice System

While juvenile crime, including violent crime, has decreased in recent years, legislators throughout the country have supported increasingly punitive responses to youthful misconduct. Thus, despite the fact that, in an average year, less than one-half of one percent of juveniles in the United States are arrested for a violent offense, more than 40 states have changed their laws to allow increased prosecution of juveniles in adult criminal court. Moreover, in a radical change in federal policy, Congress is considering legislation that would also encourage states to prosecute even more juveniles as adults, weaken protection for youth held in jails with adult inmates and allow juvenile records to be made available to schools (including colleges and vocational schools).

These legislative changes are taking place despite clear evidence that more punitive approaches do not reduce crime. Indeed, careful research in Florida, New York and New Jersey, has demonstrated that juveniles sent into the adult system are significantly more likely to be rearrested than those kept in juvenile court, commit new offenses sooner, and commit more serious offenses than juveniles kept in juvenile court. Yet many legislators and other policymakers ignore the research, and there is little informed public debate on juvenile justice issues. Equally disturbing, the evening news is regularly filled with stories of young (usually minority) perpetrators, sometimes even referring to these youth as "super predators." Consequently, the public consistently ranks "fear of crime" among its highest concerns, drops in crime notwithstanding.

Minority Youth Get Hit The Hardest

The great weight of these punitive juvenile justice policies falls disproportionately on minority youth. For example, although African-American youth age 10 to 17 constitute 15% of their age group in the U.S. population, they account for 26% of juvenile arrests, 32% of delinquency referrals to juvenile court, 41% of juveniles detained in delinquency cases, 46% of juveniles in corrections institutions, and 52% of juveniles transferred to adult criminal court after judicial hearings.

As the numbers indicate, the disproportionality is greater as youth go deeper into the system. In 1991, the long-term custody rate for African-American youth was nearly five times the rate for white youth, and in 1995, a black youth was seven times more likely to be held in a public detention facility than a white youth. During that same year, minorities constituted over 68% of the incarcerated population in training schools-the most restrictive, most secure public institutional environment for juveniles-and yet they were just under 32% of the general youth population.

It would be easy to simply attribute this large discrepancy to the notion that young people of different racial groups commit different types of crimes. In 1992, though, there were significantly higher rates of admission of African-American juveniles for every offense group.

In fact, among all offense categories, black youth were more likely to be detained than white youth during every year between 1985 and 1994. Minority youth are also more likely to be removed from their families than white youth. For example, between 1987 and 1991, out-of-home placements for non-white youth increased significantly for property, drug and public order offenses (29%, 30% and 32%, respectively). During that same period in these same categories, out-of-home placements for white youth noticeably decreased (by 1%, 29% and 15%, respectively). Black youth are also much more likely to end up in prisons with adult offenders. In 1995, nearly 10,000 juvenile cases were transferred to adult criminal court by judicial waiver. Of these proceedings, cases involving black youth were 50% more likely to be waived than cases involving white youth. Overall, black youth constituted 52% of all the children and adolescents waived to adult court, and in most states, minority juveniles were overrepresented, on average, in adult jails at a rate more than 2 ½ times their proportion of the total youth population.

African-Americans are not the only youth disproportionately impacted by the juvenile justice system. The number of minority youth held in detention centers increased by 79% from 1983 to 1991, while the number of white youth increased by only 8%. African-American and Latino youth were particularly overrepresented in detention.

In a single-day census of all juvenile detention centers on February 15, 1991, minorities made up two-thirds of the detained youth.

Moreover, a study of the juvenile justice system in California found that minority youth, particularly African-American and Latino youth, consistently receive more severe dispositions than white youth and are more likely to be committed to state institutions than white youth for the same offenses.

Unfortunately, research in this area specific to Latino youth is scant. Many state and national studies place Latino youth in inconsistent categories. Thus, OJJDP's 1996 national report on juvenile offenders and victims, reflecting data collected by the states, includes Latino youth as "white" when counting violent crime and transfers to adult court, then lists them as "minority" in its confinement statistics. As a result, data on the extent to which Latino youth are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system are incomplete and more is needed.

Nevertheless, the 1996 OJJDP report found disproportionate confinement of Latino youth in secure detention facilities and in secure corrections institutions in a majority of the states that provided separate data. The states with the largest proportions of Latino youth in their adolescent populations - New Mexico, California, Texas, and Arizona - all reported disproportionate confinement of Latino youth in secure detention, or secure corrections, or both.

The Harsh Consequences

The disproportionate impact of the justice system on minority youth raises particular concerns in the context of the new laws increasing prosecution of juveniles as adults. Many young people prosecuted as adults will go to prison, some for many years. Yet a national survey of Departments of Corrections conducted for the National Institute of Corrections found that in more than half the states, young people under 18 are housed in the general prison population or, as the study said, "in protective custody if necessary." Thus, for many youth, the choice will be between the dangers of mixing with adult inmates or years of isolation in protective custody.

These disparate rates of involvement in the juvenile justice system, leading to incarceration, have a dramatic impact on minority youth as they become adults. The Sentencing Project has reported that one-third of all African-American males ages 20 to 29 in the United States are under the jurisdiction of the criminal justice system-either in jail, in prison, on probation, or on parole. In some cities, such as Baltimore and Washington, DC, the number actually approaches 50%. The primary factors contributing to this extraordinary level of social control over young black men are drug enforcement policies and prior criminal records of minority defendants. Since minority youth are disproportionately impacted by the juvenile justice system, where they pick up those prior records, the juvenile system in effect acts as a feeder system for minority youth into the adult criminal justice system.

The impact of these incredibly high rates of incarceration on minority families and communities is profound. For example, one of the consequences of an adult felony conviction in most states is the loss of voting rights for a period of time, and sometimes for life. Thus, as a result of increasing numbers of young black males being supervised in the criminal justice system, currently approximately 1.4 million black males (which represents 14%, or one in seven of the 10.4 million black males of voting age) are now either currently or permanently disenfranchised from voting. It is clear that the cumulative impact of such large numbers of black males being excluded from the electoral process will increasingly dilute the political power of the African-American community. Another significant impact of incarceration (or even simply arrest), is the reduction of potential future wage earning and employability. For example, Richard Freeman's study of the impact of imprisonment on earnings potential concluded that among a sample of youth incarcerated in 1979, there was a 25% reduction in the number of hours worked over the next eight years. Therefore, as we see increasingly disparate and astoundingly high rates of incarceration for minority youth and adults, the result is likely to be a similarly disparate and devastating impact on the minority communities in which many of these young men live, with the removal of large numbers of potential wage earners, a disruption of family relationships, and a growing sense of isolation and alienation from the larger society.

A Closer Look At What's Happening Around The Country

Compared to their representation in the general population, minority youth are overrepresented at all stages of the justice system. A closer look at various states across the country provides a glimpse of this bleak picture.

The State Perspective

In the majority of states, overrepresentation of minority youth increases from the early stage of arrest through other decision points in the system to the final stage of secure corrections or transfer to criminal court. When particular states are isolated and highlighted, the disparities become glaringly apparent.

On February 15, 1995, three states together-California, Ohio, and Texas-held nearly 40% (26,623) of all the juveniles in custody in public facilities throughout the nation.

The Local Perspective

Beyond The Statistics

While clearly these numbers tell the story of a generation of minority youth being arrested and incarcerated at frightening rates, this is really only part of the story. What the numbers don't and can't reveal is the physical brutality and danger of a system that treats young minority youth as if they are animals needing to be restrained and placed in cages. For example, we know the shocking statistics that show that youth in adult institutions are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted, twice as likely to be beaten, and 50% more likely to be attacked with a weapon than youth in juvenile facilities. However, without actually seeing the inside of such an institution or talking with a youngster who has been confined in an adult facility, we can't really appreciate these statistics. And what about what is happening on the streets of our nation's cities? Knowing that at one point a black youth in Baltimore was 100 times more likely to be arrested for a drug offense than a white youth is clearly disturbing, but these numbers don't tell the story of young black youth being harassed, intimidated and sometimes beaten in the name of curfew enforcement and neighborhood drug sweeps. The numbers also don't tell the story of what's happening on "the other side of town," and how the treatment of white youth in our communities and justice systems may "look and feel" decidedly different than the way in which minority youth are treated.

References

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