Family Structure and Racial Disparity in Opportunities for Diversion

• In Event: Disproportionate Minority Contact at Early Stages of the Justice Process

Abstract

The overrepresentation of youth of color in the juvenile justice system has been well documented. We examine assignment of youth to pretrial diversion programs as one understudied area of this overrepresentation. Based on official data from an urban county in a southern U.S. state, we find that there are several factors correlated with assignment to a diversion program: (1) personal characteristics; (2) delinquency characteristics; (3) characteristics of the complaintant, and (4) living arrangement. Binary logistic regression is employed to examine the nature of the relationship between the above mentioned factors and assignment to a diversion program. We find that decisions based on a juvenile’s family structure result in unequal consequences for nonwhite juveniles because of a correlation between race and family structure. Moreover, even though living arrangement influences the offer of diversion, family structure is not a statistically significant predictor of successful completion of a pretrial diversion program. We discuss these findings as potential evidence of institutional bias in the juvenile justice system. Based on this evidence, we advocate pretrial diversion programs that intentionally seek to serve juveniles housed in unconventional living arrangements.

Authors

• Tony P. Love, University of Kentucky

• Edward Morris, University of Kentucky