A Life Table Approach to Estimating Disproportionate Minority Contact in the Juvenile Justice System

• In Event: Racial and Ethnic Variation in Disproportionate Minority Contact

Abstract

Research on disproportionate minority contact (DMC) in the juvenile justice system has focused primarily on black-white disparities and on one stage in the system at a time. Fewer studies have examined disparities between white and other minority youth, especially Hispanics/Latinos. Likewise, limited studies address how disparities operate through the full flow of juvenile court processing, taking the cascading nature of the decision making process into account. Our study addresses both of these gaps by identifying which stages in the juvenile justice system account for the greatest proportion of the total disparity between black, white, Asian, and Hispanic/Latino youth. We use life table analysis, which is uniquely capable of tracing the cumulative effect of the juvenile justice system and the interrelated nature of each decision point in the process. We apply these methods to data from 2008 to 2010 in Georgia that include white, black Hispanic/Latino, and Asian youth. Our findings implicate distinct decision points for intervention to reduce total DMC for black versus Hispanic/Latino youth. Arrest/referral accounts for the greatest proportion of total system DMC for black youth, but most of the disparity in the overall decision flow for Hispanic/Latino youth results from the petition stage.

Authors

• Sarah Shannon, University of Georgia

• Matthew Hauer, University of Georgia