This
is a tough one. With this topic, numbers can be misleading and sources vary
greatly. Michelle Alexander made very clear in The New Jim Crow that just because police focus their presence in
neighborhoods commonly filled with minority residents of low socio-economic
status, does not mean they are the only ones or even among the worst ones committing
crimes. This is a very complex issue and I highly recommend reading Alexander’s
book if you haven’t yet.
To
show how it is possible to argue this in varied ways because of the myriad
information out there on race and criminal justice, I share the following.
Before reading this, I recommend you catch up from the first post called “ClarifyingBeliefs About Juvenile Delinquency” so you know where all this is coming from.
Myth 4 – All juvenile delinquents are minorities.
The racial
composition of a juvenile detention facility will vary according to its
geographic location. As a result, there will be some facilities that are
majority minority and some that are majority White. To investigate the belief
statement that delinquents are predominately or all minorities, it is necessary
to look at national averages instead of specific regions.
The Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Programs reported the demographics of youth involved in
cases handled by juvenile courts in 2011 was 61.7% Caucasion, 38.3% “minority,”
35.1% Black, 1.9% American Indian, and 1.3% Asian (Sickmund, Sladky, & Kang,
2014). The arrests in 2011 showed similar racial disparity. Of the total number
of juvenile arrests, 66% of offenders where White. When these statistics are disaggregated
by type of crime, the majority of offenders are still categorized as White. For
example, White offenders topped the following crimes for 2011 juvenile arrests:
driving under the influence (91%), liquor laws (89%), drunkenness (87%), vandalism
(76%), vagrancy (73%), arson (72%), sex offense (70%), forcible rape (64%),
aggravated assault (56%), and many more (Puzzanchera, 2013, p. 4).
These statistics show that although
regional differences exist, nationally the majority of juvenile delinquents are
not, in fact, minorities. Interestingly, the statistics about victims of juvenile
crime tell a different story. Statistics from 1980 through 2003 consistently
show “the serious violent crime victimization rate for…Black juveniles averaged
67% above the White race” (Snyder & Sickmund, 2006, p. 27).
