An Indictment of Juvenile Justice

No one wants to think that racial discrimination pervades our juvenile justice system, but a recent report underwritten by the Justice Department and six leading foundations makes the assertion unavoidable. The report found that at every step in the juvenile justice system, minorities are treated more harshly than their white counterparts. For similar crimes, minority youth are more likely to be arrested, held in jail, sent to court for trial, and given longer prison terms. The statistics speak for themselves.

Young people who have never been sent to prison before are six times more likely to be sentenced to a prison term (rather than placed in an alternative disciplinary institution or given other punishments) if they are black rather than white. For young people charged with a violent crime who have not been sent to prison before, black teenagers are nine times more likely than whites to be sentenced to juvenile prison. For those charged with drug offenses, blacks are 48 times more likely than whites to be sentenced to juvenile prison.

When prior reports have shown racial discrepancies in incarceration rates, critics have rushed to counter that minorities commit a disproportionate amount of crime. However, this response cannot explain the disparities at each stage in the process documented by the national and state data compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other federal agencies. Blacks under the age of 18 make up 15 percent of their age group and 26 percent of those arrested. But they also represent 46 percent of all juveniles referred to adult criminal courts, 40 percent of those sent to juvenile prisons and 58 percent of those incarcerated in adult prisons. These racial disparities are introduced during the decisions to arrest, to file charges, to convict and to sentence. Furthermore, because judges, rather than juries, often make the determination of guilt, the statistics show that the discrimination--intentional or not--is located within the justice system.

These discrepancies have serious ramifications not only because they make it harder for minorities to get jobs and a complete education; they also have grave consequences for juveniles who are now subject to the harsher sentencing guidelines passed by states over the last decade. When the penalties are greater, the effects of discrimination in the juvenile justice system fall even heavier on minorities. Harsh penalties for juveniles only compound the discrimination this report exposes.