Disproportionate Representation of Minority Youth in the Juvenile Justice System: Is Race and Unconscious Bias the Cause or Access to Services by no other means?

• In Event: Lightning Talk: Disproportionate Representation of Minority Youth in the Juvenile Justice System: Is Race and Unconscious Bias the Root Cause or is Access to Services by No Other Means?

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the socioeconomic disadvantages of minority youth, particularly Black youth and families in need of services but find no other pathway other than adjudication to probation. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has committed substantial funding to understanding, identifying and reducing disproportionate minority contact in the juvenile justice system. This article analyzes the initial contact with juvenile justice practitioners through the disposition phase of youth cases. This article will show that many youth of color are adjudicated to probation because they are in need of services and the family does not have adequate means to access to mental health, drug abuse counseling and other family preservation modeled programs. Thus, families in need of services tend to be frustrated with the youth’s behavior and defiance, consequently leaving juvenile justice and court officials to apply adjudicated sanctions to prevent the youth from subsequent offenses. These assumptions are up for debate, however if funding is not prioritized at diverting youth from adjudication, local agencies will do what is believed to be, “best for the child”. Hence creating a patriarchal framework where practitioners and the courts only mechanism for intervention is adjudication. The analysis has generated ideas for consideration on the frontend of the juvenile justice continuum of services vice its traditional application of services which are largely aligned with appropriations from state and federal fundingstreams directed at adjudicated youth

Author

• Glennie Edwin Burks, Public Policy Associates