Exploring the Context of Disproportionate Minority Contact: Does the Impact of Race Vary across Juvenile Court Stages and Jurisdictions?

• In Event: Exploring Racial Disparities in Juvenile Justice Processing

Abstract

It is well established that disproportionate minority contact (DMC) pervades the juvenile justice system, with minority youth making up a disproportionately large share of juvenile offenders processed every year. Yet, most research has: (1) focused on only one jurisdiction at a time, limiting the generalizability of findings, and (2) examined only one stage of the juvenile justice system, thereby limiting our understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the relationship between race and juvenile court outcomes. The present paper uses using official juvenile court data on juvenile referrals across 560 counties within seven states. Multilevel models are employed to assess the impact of race/ethnicity on each of five major stages of juvenile justice processing: detention, petition, adjudication, waiver to adult court, and final disposition. In addition to the direct impact of race, cross-level interactions between race and a series of contextual variables are estimated to measure the role of macro-social context in moderating the influence of race and ethnicity for each major decision point in the state juvenile justice system.

Author

• Steven N. Zane, Northeastern University