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?

Session Submission Type: Lightning Talk Session

Abstract/Description

This article explores the socioeconomic disadvantages of minority youth, particularly Black youth in need of services but find no pathway other than adjudication to probation. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has committed substantial funding to understand, identify and reduce DMC 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 because they are in need of services like 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. Funding has to be prioritized to divert youth from adjudication. Hence creating a patriarchal framework where the courts primary 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 funding streams directed at adjudicated youth.

Sub Unit

• Area XVI. Lightning Talks

Individual Presentations

• 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? - Glennie Edwin Burks, Public Policy Associates

• Disproportionate Minority Contact - Glennie Edwin Burks, Public Policy Associates

• Understanding and reducing Disproportionate Minority Contact - Glennie Edwin Burks, Public Policy Associates

• 21st Century Leadership in Criminal Justice - Glennie Edwin Burks, Public Policy Associates

• High Performance Leaders in Juvenile Justice - Glennie Edwin Burks, Public Policy Associates

Chair

• Mikko Aaltonen, University of Helsinki

Discussants

• Sanaz Alasti, Lamar University

• Anas Askar, Howard University

• Matthew Bills, Sam Houston State University

• Melanie Brazzell, University of California, Santa Barbara

• Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Yiwen Zhang, Pennsylvania State University