Concentrated Disadvantage and Youth Sentencing: Does Race Play a Role?

• In Event: Juvenile Justice Decision-Making

Abstract

Research on juvenile court outcomes tends to focus on the impact of individual and legal factors. However, few studies consider the impact of contextual factors on juvenile sentencing. An important contextual factor to consider when examining juvenile court outcomes is concentrated disadvantage—an indicator of relative poverty in a community which also impacts the strength of social and community bonds as well as resources available. Prior research indicates a relationship between concentrated disadvantage and juvenile court outcomes as well as an interaction with race.

In this study, multi-level modeling is used to assess the impact of disadvantage and race across census tracts on several youth court outcomes.

Author

• Rimonda Maroun, University of Massachusetts