NCJ Number
232186
Date Published
August 2006
Length
92 pages
Annotation
This study examined the racial disproportionality among juvenile detainees at the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC).
Abstract
Major findings of the study include: (1) all nine police departments studied referred a disproportionate number of minority juveniles to the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center (JDC); (2) although the overall number of juveniles brought to the JDC declined from 2002 through 2004, African-American juveniles as a proportion of that population increased; (3) Minneapolis police and the eight surrounding suburban police departments studied had contact with African-American juveniles in much greater proportion than their numbers in the 10-17 year old population; (4) African-American juveniles comprised two-thirds of all bench warrants and 59 percent of all arrest and detention warrants; (5) for other types of cases involving prior detention charges, African-American juveniles represented almost three-fourths of the 61 juveniles admitted for termination of court-ordered treatment, 60 percent of the 88 juveniles detained while awaiting placement, and 81 percent of the 169 juveniles admitted for violation of electronic home detention; and (6) of the admissions based on new charges, dismissal, and adjudication rates for felony level petitions were similar across African-American and White juveniles, while dismissal and adjudication rates for African-American and White juveniles were dissimilar for misdemeanor level petitions with petitions for African-American juveniles having a higher dismissal rate (21.2 percent versus 9.9 percent). This report outlines the results of an extensive effort to examine disproportionate minority confinement in Hennepin County's JDC. There has long been concern both nationally and locally about the number of African-American juveniles held in secure detention in comparison to their numbers in the general population. Charts, tables, and appendixes 1-13