Minority Juveniles in the Criminal Justice System
There is no questioning the fact that crime has been around since the beginning of time. And it has been over time that crimes has escalated in both severity and frequency. One thing that has changed over time is the amount of crime that is being committed by juveniles. In today’s independent lifestyle adolescents have become much more adverse toward the law. And with the current coverage that minorities are getting in regards to crime and instances like police brutality, it is giving various minority communities a negative inward look. When you combine the rebellious acts of teenagers and the negative connotations that minorities are facing, being a minority youth is becoming a more dangerous …show more content…
What is even more alarming though, is the number of America’s youth that are involved in said criminal activity. However, as there is with adult crimes rates, there is still much racial disparity among the crimes rates of the juvenile minorities. The Relative Rate Index (RRI) measures the rate at which racial disparity between Caucasian youths and minority youths during specific stages throughout the system (Rovner). In Joshua Rovner’s piece, Disproportionate Minority Contact in the Juvenile Justice System, he stated that “despite a drop in overall arrest rates nationally, black youth are still twice as likely to be arrested as white youth. In 2011, black youth were two hundred and sixty- nine percent more likely to be arrested for violating curfew laws than white youth.” Along with curfew violations, focusing on property offenses, youth of color were more than 2.5 times as likely to be arrested in comparison to white youth (Rovner). Since the early eighties, arrest rates among youths have dropped sufficiently, but the gap between non-minorities and minorities is still widely varied. The various influences that race implies can been seen in multiple areas when sending an adolescent through the criminal justice system. These effects can be either indirect or direct, and as a youth travels farther along through the system these effects and disparities may accumulate (Pope). In an …show more content…
Since there are so many more steps and a myriad of processes to go through when a juvenile gets arrested, it is important that officials carefully track all the processes a youth will go through, especially at each major decision point. This is imperative because it is at these major decision spots that racial disparities occur and affect the juvenile. Bishop completed research alongside Charles Frazier and in their piece, Race Effects in Juvenile Justice Decision- Making: Findings of a Statewide Analysis, that when a white youth has certain characteristics they are forty- seven percent more likely to be recommended for processing. These characteristics include a mid- age male teen, who committed a misdemeanor in addition to having already one prior referral for a misdemeanor regarding property. If these same characteristics were applied to a youth with minority background there would be a fifty- four percent chance of a recommendation for formal processing (Bishop and Frazier). Throughout the entirety of Bishop and Frazier’s research they found multiple indications of racial dissimilarities within the processing of juveniles. A white youth has a twelve percent chance of being held within a secure detention facility compared to the sixteen percent of their colored counterparts (Bishop and Frazier). When looking at the inconsistencies between the arrest rates of white and black youths,
There is no questioning the fact that crime has been around since the beginning of time. And it has been over time that crimes has escalated in both severity and frequency. One thing that has changed over time is the amount of crime that is being committed by juveniles. In today’s independent lifestyle adolescents have become much more adverse toward the law. And with the current coverage that minorities are getting in regards to crime and instances like police brutality, it is giving various minority communities a negative inward look. When you combine the rebellious acts of teenagers and the negative connotations that minorities are facing, being a minority youth is becoming a more dangerous …show more content…
What is even more alarming though, is the number of America’s youth that are involved in said criminal activity. However, as there is with adult crimes rates, there is still much racial disparity among the crimes rates of the juvenile minorities. The Relative Rate Index (RRI) measures the rate at which racial disparity between Caucasian youths and minority youths during specific stages throughout the system (Rovner). In Joshua Rovner’s piece, Disproportionate Minority Contact in the Juvenile Justice System, he stated that “despite a drop in overall arrest rates nationally, black youth are still twice as likely to be arrested as white youth. In 2011, black youth were two hundred and sixty- nine percent more likely to be arrested for violating curfew laws than white youth.” Along with curfew violations, focusing on property offenses, youth of color were more than 2.5 times as likely to be arrested in comparison to white youth (Rovner). Since the early eighties, arrest rates among youths have dropped sufficiently, but the gap between non-minorities and minorities is still widely varied. The various influences that race implies can been seen in multiple areas when sending an adolescent through the criminal justice system. These effects can be either indirect or direct, and as a youth travels farther along through the system these effects and disparities may accumulate (Pope). In an …show more content…
Since there are so many more steps and a myriad of processes to go through when a juvenile gets arrested, it is important that officials carefully track all the processes a youth will go through, especially at each major decision point. This is imperative because it is at these major decision spots that racial disparities occur and affect the juvenile. Bishop completed research alongside Charles Frazier and in their piece, Race Effects in Juvenile Justice Decision- Making: Findings of a Statewide Analysis, that when a white youth has certain characteristics they are forty- seven percent more likely to be recommended for processing. These characteristics include a mid- age male teen, who committed a misdemeanor in addition to having already one prior referral for a misdemeanor regarding property. If these same characteristics were applied to a youth with minority background there would be a fifty- four percent chance of a recommendation for formal processing (Bishop and Frazier). Throughout the entirety of Bishop and Frazier’s research they found multiple indications of racial dissimilarities within the processing of juveniles. A white youth has a twelve percent chance of being held within a secure detention facility compared to the sixteen percent of their colored counterparts (Bishop and Frazier). When looking at the inconsistencies between the arrest rates of white and black youths,