NCJ Number
155937
Editor(s)
K K Leonard,
C E Pope,
W H Feyerherm
Date Published
1995
Length
246 pages
Annotation
These nine research and policy papers examine the experiences of minority youths in the juvenile justice system, with emphasis on the extent and sources of disparate handling of youths within juvenile justice, the need to respond to this bias, and policy recommendations and practical strategies for overcoming racial inequity in the juvenile justice process.
Abstract
The analyses present research findings and focus on racial differences in juveniles' encounters with the police, urban juvenile courts, and confinement and punishment. Individual papers present data from a Florida database and interviews with Florida juvenile justice administrators, describe the necessity of ethnographic investigation to learn about police-juvenile interactions, and research in Minnesota indicating the need for reconsidering expectations for rationality and patterns of responses in a system that dictates individuality in treatment. Further papers use Pennsylvania to clarify the need to regard juvenile justice as a series of interrelated decisions, Washington data that explain the role of structural characteristics of communities in shaping perceptions of juvenile crime and official responses, and factors external juvenile justice that affect the overrepresentation of minorities in the California juvenile justice system, and the handling of Native American Indians in the juvenile justice system. Tables, figures, chapter notes, index, and approximately 200 references