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Individual characteristics and community context in decisions to divert or arrest
Abstract
Diversion programs are increasingly being implemented as an alternative to more severe sanctions, especially within juvenile justice. The civil citation program in Florida is unique in that it diverts juveniles away from the justice system at the earliest decision point of arrest. However, despite its growing use in a number of states, there is little research on the program's implementation and outcomes, namely, it remains unknown if the program is being applied consistently across communities and for juveniles within those communities. Drawing from the larger sociology of punishment, race, and social control literature, and the associated theories of labeling and social threat, this study employs statewide data from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice to explore the community and individual determinants of civil citation's use. Consistent with the theoretical arguments of labeling and social threat, the multilevel analysis finds that community and individual characteristics, in particular race, impact the likelihood of receiving civil citation. Implications for future research, theory, and policy are discussed.
Neighborhood disadvantage is linked to a higher risk of referrals to child welfare and juvenile justice systems. While past research has explored these associations independently, no study has concurrently examined the spatial overlap of child maltreatment and juvenile justice involvement. We examine the spatial overlap of involvement in juvenile justice and child welfare systems to identify areas of shared risk. Results show a significant positive association between juvenile justice and child maltreatment referrals across neighborhoods. After adjusting for residential instability, immigrant concentration, and residential racial segregation, children in the least deprived 20 % of neighborhoods were 95.2 % and 55.5 % less likely to be referred to child welfare or justice systems, respectively, compared to those in the most deprived 20 %. Our findings highlight the value of geospatial analyses to guide public health interventions by targeting the shared overlapping risk factors associated with neighborhoods with high risk for both child welfare and juvenile justice system involvement.
Objectives
We examine the relationship between political and religious context and juvenile court dispositions, including whether case-level indicators of focal concerns are moderated by community politics and religion.
Methods
Using a sample of 55,328 juvenile defendants across 175 counties in three states, we first employ multilevel modeling to estimate the direct effects of political and religious context on odds of placement. Second, we examine cross-level interactions between political and religious context, on the one hand, and major case-level predictors of placement, on the other.
Results
We found mixed support for the hypotheses. While neither political nor religious context were directly associated with odds of placement, religious context moderated several case-level effects. Specifically, findings indicated that violent offenders were punished more harshly in more religious and more religiously homogeneous counties, defendants with a prior record were punished less harshly in more religious and more religiously homogenous counties, Hispanic defendants were punished less harshly in more evangelical counties, and male defendants were punished less harshly in more religiously homogeneous counties.
Conclusion
Juvenile punishment varies across different courts and systems, yet major contextual hypotheses for this variation (e.g., minority threat) have received limited empirical support. Our findings indicate that other aspects of community context, most notably religiosity, may moderate the relationship between case-level factors and juvenile court punishment.
This study tests the explanatory power of two prominent public administration theories—political control and representative bureaucracy—in understanding disparities in public service provision. While prior research focused on street‐level bureaucracy, we study here how political and group identities of top elected law enforcement officials affect the distribution of youth arrests, alternatives, and prosecutions among minority groups. Data from Florida's 67 counties between 2015 and 2020 demonstrate that sheriff's and state attorney's party affiliation, race, and ethnicity do affect street‐level outcomes. However, the effects are more pronounced for race than ideology. Also, representative bureaucracy appears more relevant for race than ethnicity and explains the behavior of Black sheriffs but not Black state attorneys. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
This article lays bare three interrelated and previously overlooked pitfalls of calls to reduce or abolish youth incarceration. First, despite their anti-carceral semblance, such calls persistently portray the overwhelming majority of people in trouble with the law—namely, adults—as incorrigible, blameworthy, and therefore as deserving of punishment and imprisonment. Second, this ageist rhetoric often disregards adult vulnerability. Thus, despite adults’ greater medical vulnerability to the COVID-19 disease, it is youth whom some organizations singled out or even called to prioritize for release from prisons during the coronavirus pandemic. Third, at the heart of the youth decarceration discourse are essentialist assumptions about youth, which rest on questionable science and downplay the socially constructed dimension of age differences. All three pitfalls epitomize a dual fault of the child rights discourse more broadly, as evidenced in other contexts: repeatedly lending legitimacy to punitiveness and apathy toward adults while also working to the detriment of children. Doubtless, there are compelling arguments against penal confinement, but it is only decarceration across the age spectrum that can truly challenge carceral thinking—and ageism.
Suppression and intelligence gathering actions by police gang units are critically important for understanding post-Civil Rights social control and resistance by people of color. In this article, I first provide an overview of newly incorporated (post-1990s) gang units in two cities (Denver, Colorado, and Ogden, Utah). Then I describe how people of Mexican descent living in urban barrios respond to dominant group actions that criminalize innocent behavior. Finally, I explore how street activists react to gang units and aggressive policing.
African Americans have long been overrepresented in juvenile justice, starting at arrest and all the way through to confinement. Importantly, some scholars argue examining “back-end” processes of juvenile justice and exploring the utility of different theoretical frameworks may aid in explaining African American overrepresentation. Drawing on two similar theoretical explanations, symbolic and racial threat, this study examines whether disparities are explained better by perceived threats to the dominant group norms and values, as well as between-group inequalities (symbolic threat) or Black encroachment into the political and economic resources of the dominant (White) group (racial threat). Notably, this study explores the effects of symbolic and racial threat on reduced and dropped charges within one states’ juvenile court. Hierarchical generalized linear models are utilized to analyze official Department of Juvenile Justice files, which were supplemented with American Community Survey data. Results indicated strong support for the symbolic threat perspective but fail to support the tenants of racial threat. Implications of these findings and future directions for research were discussed.
Much prior research has examined racial and ethnic disparities in juvenile court interventions, and the evidence suggests that minority youth are sanctioned more harshly than similarly situated White youth. Additionally, scholars have explored the potential negative consequences of juvenile justice contact, and some research indicates that more intensive juvenile court dispositions are associated with increased reoffending, particularly among minority youth. What is unknown, however, is the relevance of race, ethnicity, and gender for these outcomes under a structured disposition guidelines system, which is intended to aid judges’ decision-making and reduce recidivism following justice system intervention. Analysis of youth sanctioned under Florida’s disposition matrix (N = 56,913) shows that Black youth are more likely to receive upward departures from the guideline-recommended sanctions and that the increased likelihood of recidivism resulting from receiving an upward departure is particularly pronounced among minority males. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Contemporary juvenile justice policy inhabits a context of austerity, over-criminalization of youth, and disproportionate minority contact. To respond to this context responsibly, jurisdictions should enact policies that promote the use of informal diversion to decriminalize low-risk youth; the use of formal diversion to keep high-risk youth in their communities, getting services they need, and away from court processing; and recoup services to outside of the juvenile justice system.
Purpose:
Much criminal justice research has ignored racial/ethnic and gender differences in substance use subsequent to criminal justice involvement. This paper investigated how early adulthood arrest (i.e., 18 to 21 years of age) influences individuals' subsequent transitions from non-substance use to substance use, and substance use to non-substance use through age 30. We also consider if these relationships differ by race/ethnicity and gender. Processes proscribed by labeling theory subsequent to getting arrested are considered.
Methods:
We analyzed 15 waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997. Multinomial logistic regressions were performed using Stata software version 14.
Results:
We found racial/ethnic differences in the effect of arrest on subsequent substance use, particularly marijuana. Being arrested was associated with shifting non-binge drinkers and non-marijuana users into binge drinking and marijuana use; as well as shifting binge drinkers and marijuana users into non-use. This pattern was most evident among White and Black men. For Black men, the association between arrest and both becoming a binge drinker and becoming a non-binge drinker was experienced most strongly during their early twenties. Women's patterns in substance use transitions following an arrest were less clear than for the men.
Conclusion:
Some results, particularly transitioning into marijuana use, offer qualified support for processes proscribed through labeling theory. Findings that arrest shifts individuals into non-marijuana use suggest that factors not accounted for by labeling theory - arrest serving as a teachable moment for those using substances - may be at play.
Noting the paucity of research on the racial threat hypothesis in the juvenile courts, this study examined the interplay of defendant characteristics and country-level characteristics on dispositions. Data were retrieved from the Department of Juvenile Justice files in South Carolina and were analyzed using multinomial logistic hierarchical linear modeling. Results revealed support for the racial threat hypothesis, as racial inequity operated in a different manner (more punitively) for Black defendants. Larger Black populations in counties also led to an increased use of punitive sanctions. In addition, concentrated disadvantage effects were found, and heightened levels of teenage population led to higher incarceration rates for Black defendants. Limitations of this study, implications for stakeholders/practitioners, and directions for future research are discussed.
Noting the paucity of research on the racial threat hypothesis in the juvenile courts, this study examined the interplay of defendant characteristics and country-level characteristics on dispositions. Data were retrieved from the Department of Juvenile Justice files in South Carolina and were analyzed using multinomial logistic hierarchical linear modeling. Results revealed support for the racial threat hypothesis, as racial inequity operated in a different manner (more punitively) for Black defendants. Larger Black populations in counties also led to an increased use of punitive sanctions. In addition, concentrated disadvantage effects were found, and heightened levels of teenage population led to higher incarceration rates for Black defendants. Limitations of this study, implications for stakeholders/practitioners, and directions for future research are discussed.
The present study uses a mixed-methods research strategy to examine police practitioner-researcher partnerships. The study has two primary research objectives: (1) examine the prevalence of police practitioner-researcher partnerships in the United States; and (2) examine the factors that prevent or facilitate the development and sustainability of police practitioner-researcher partnerships. The subsequent goals to be accomplished through these objectives are as follows: (1) identify the current level of participation in partnerships with researchers among law enforcement agencies; (2) identify the characteristics of agencies who participate in these partnerships; and (3) gain an understanding of the important lessons learned from practitioners and researchers for forming these partnerships in order to inform future participants in these efforts. The study employs three data-collection strategies to accomplish these objectives and goals. First, a nationally-representative sample of law enforcement agencies was surveyed to capture the prevalence of police practitioner-researcher partnerships and associated information. Second, practitioner and researcher representatives from 89 separate partnerships were interviewed, which were identified through the national survey. The interviews were the primary data-collection effort for gaining insight into the barriers to and facilitators of the development and sustainability of these partnerships, as well as the benefits of partnering . Third, four case studies were conducted on model partnerships that were identified during interviews with practitioners and researchers. While these case studies provide a detailed look at sustainable partnerships, the primary purpose of the case studies is to support a multimedia component of this study. The videos that represent this multimedia component convey important information from one peer to another. This strategy is directed to the practitioner community in order to facilitate dissemination of these important relationships by credible sources.
Scholars and policy makers have expressed concern that observed minority differences in processing (e.g., arrest, detention, conviction) and sentencing stem not from the legal merits of cases but rather from intentional or unintentional discrimination. An additional concern is that there may be disparities in society that lead to offending differences among racial and ethnic groups, and that these differences may be amplified by disparities that minorities experience in and through the criminal justice system. In this article, we identify the dimensions along which information is needed to document minority disparities in criminal justice processing and sanctioning and to guide interventions to reduce them. We conclude that research to date has not systematically documented the true prevalence of minority disparities in criminal justice processing or sanctioning or the causes of them. We then argue that social structural disparities faced by minorities warrant comparable attention to that given to criminal justice disparities. Documentation of these disparities and their causes will be necessary to shed light on the exercise of formal social control. It also can contribute to efforts to understand offending and how most effectively to reduce crime and unfair sanctioning.
Purpose
Interpretations of focal concerns and “loose coupling” are used to explain juvenile diversion decisions by police and prosecutors from a large metropolitan county in the Midwest.
Methods
Juveniles eligible for police diversion are compared to those actually diverted using a population of juveniles arrested in eight police urban and suburban agencies. Multinomial logistic regression is used to analyze data on juveniles referred for charging in the same county.
Results
Non-White juveniles were significantly less likely to be diverted by police, formally entering them into the juvenile justice system earlier than their White counterparts. Prosecutors charged, rather than diverted, non-White juveniles significantly more frequently than White juveniles, particularly for theft cases.
Conclusion
The racial disparity observed may result from differing focal concerns and loose coupling in the first stages of the justice system.
Using federal court data collected by the U.S. Sentencing Commission for the years 1993-1996, this study examines racial/ethnic differences-white versus black versus white-Hispanic versus black-Hispanic-in sentencing outcomes and criteria under the federal sentencing guidelines. Regression analyses of incarceration and term-length decisions reveal considerable judicial consistency in the use of sentencing criteria for all defendants; however, important racial/ethnic disparities in sentencing emerge. Consistent with theoretical hypotheses, the authors find that ethnicity has a small to moderate effect on sentencing outcomes that favors white defendants and penalizes Hispanic defendants; black defendants are in an intermediate position. Hispanic drug offenders are most at risk of receiving the harshest penalties, and their harsher treatment is most pronounced in prosecutor-controlled guidelines departure cases. These findings highlight both a classic organizational tension noted by Weber and a fundamental dilemma in policy efforts to structure sentencing processes (formal rationality) while allowing for judicial and prosecutorial discretion (substantive rationality). The findings also broaden our view of the continuing significance of race in American society-as a matter confronting not only blacks but also Hispanics and perhaps other ethnic groups as well.
Framed within the racial/ethnic threat thesis, the present research examined the relative effects of the size of minority populations and the ratios of White-to-minority unemployment on intake, adjudication, and judicial disposition decision making within juvenile court proceedings. Communities with greater Black and Hispanic presence and greater economic equality were expected to increase the social control for youth up to a point, where social control would then diminish. These relationships were anticipated to be stronger for Blacks than Hispanics. The overall pattern of results failed to yield support specifically for these hypothesized effects and in general, for the minority threat perspective. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.
Objectives
Drawing on focal concerns theory, as well as scholarship on the juvenile court’s mandate to consider youth culpability and amenability to treatment, we develop hypotheses that seek to examine whether the court will (1) punish Whites less severely and (2) be more likely to intervene with Whites through rehabilitative intervention and, simultaneously, be more punitive and less rehabilitative with minorities, and, in particular, Black males.
Method
Florida juvenile court referral data and multinomial logistic regression analyses are used to examine multicategory disposition and “subdisposition” measures.
Results
Findings suggest that minority youth, especially Black males, are not only more likely to receive punitive sanctions, they also are less likely than White youth to receive rehabilitative interventions and instead experience significantly higher rates of dismissals. The analyses indicate that similar racial and ethnic disparities emerge when “subdispositions”—specifically, placement options within diversion and probation—are examined.
Conclusions
The results underscore the salience of race, ethnicity, and gender in juvenile court decisions about punitive sanctioning and rehabilitative intervention, as well as the importance of employing multicategory disposition measures that better reflect the range of sanctioning and intervention options available to the court.
Justice Quarterly Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:page/terms-and-conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. The Annie E. Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) seeks to reduce the reliance on pre-dispositional detention. While anecdotal evidence indicates that the program has enjoyed some success in reducing detention populations, no controlled study has assessed the efficacy of the program. The current study investigated the impact of JDAI following its adoption in one Virginia juvenile court. Specifically, using data on all juveniles referred to intake over a seven-year period, the research analyzed predictors of detention and length of stay before and after JDAI. Results indicate that after the implementation of JDAI, greater emphasis was placed on legal factors including offense seriousness and prior record, though the increased emphasis was greater for non-whites than for white youth. Additionally, results suggest that after JDAI's adop-tion, older non-white youth were more likely to receive secure detention while non-white females received some degree of leniency compared to non-white males.
Although criminal justice systems vary greatly around the world, one theme has emerged in all western jurisdictions in recent years: a rise in both the rhetoric and practice of severe punishment at a time when public opinion has played a pivotal role in sentencing policy and reforms. Despite the differences among jurisdictions, startling commonalities exist among the five countries-the U.K., USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand-surveyed here. Drawing on the results of representative opinion surveys and other research tools the authors map public attitudes towards crime and punishment across countries and explore the congruence between public views and actual policies. Co-authored by four distinguished sentencing policy experts, Penal Populism and Public Opinion is a clarion call for limiting the influence of penal populism and instituting more informed, research-based sentencing policies across the western world.
The growing body of research detailing the pronounced effects of criminal stigma on inequality in the US underscores the importance of labeling theory. In spite of the renewed interest in labeling, little research has evaluated the theoretical mechanisms underlying the theory. Drawing on the labeling perspective, this article evaluates mechanisms underlying the relationship between school punishment and reductions in adolescent academic achievement. It uses recent innovations in longitudinal network analysis to examine the consequences of school punishment as a dynamic interplay of labeling, network selection, and group influence. Results indicate that school punishment facilitates selection into academically underperforming peer networks and that this change in network composition is largely responsible for the association between school punishment and reductions in adolescent academic achievement.
Objectives
We argue that the reasons court actors conform to or depart from sentencing guideline recommendations likely vary depending on whether the decision involves an alternative sanction or incarceration and that these reasons may have consequences for ethnoracial disparities in the sentencing of defendants and how these disparities are understood.
Method
We use recent (2012–2016) Pennsylvania sentencing data to examine (1) the relationship between defendant race/ethnicity and court actors’ decisions to depart downward and upward from the guidelines and (2) whether such relationships vary depending on whether they involve an alternative sanction, namely intermediate punishments (IPs).
Results
We find that the association of defendant race/ethnicity with decisions to conform to the guidelines or to depart is greatly impacted by whether the sentence involves an IP. Blacks and, to a lesser extent, Latinos experienced greater disadvantage in guideline decision-making, whether conformity or departures, when the sentence involved an IP.
Conclusions
Results suggest that the integration of IP into guideline systems may have (1) mobilized ethnoracial disparities in sentencing, (2) focused the location of sentencing disparities to sentences involving IP, and (3) changed the applicability of common interpretations of guideline decisions and disparities in their imposition.
Prior literature has noted that disparities happen within the juvenile court process across a variety of contexts. However, research exploring this theme often neglects to use attribution theory to understand how external community-based attributions, particularly racialized interactions with real or perceived disadvantages within a community, as well as various internal attributions, and how these considerations shape placement decisions. Using quantitative juvenile court data from one southeastern state in the United States, supplemented with American Community Survey data, this study draws upon attribution theory to explore how internal and external attributions affect the placement decisions of serious and violent juveniles.
Over the past century, criminology has evolved as both an applied and increasingly recognized scientific discipline. Although criminology has experienced a number of ideological shifts in focus, the discipline is now poised to effectively combine both of its purposes, namely the ongoing search for the causes of crime and advancing the use of empirical research in policy and practice decisions. One of the most promising best practices in this simultaneous pursuit is researcher and policymaker/practitioner partnerships. This paper traces the “making a difference” movement in criminology since 2000. It begins with an assessment of the rise of and resistance to the making a difference movement, followed by a discussion of some of the challenges and prospects for criminologists in their efforts to apply research to policy and practice through researcher and policymaker/practitioner partnerships. The paper concludes with discussion of the future potential of researcher and policymaker/practitioner partnerships in successfully confronting our major crime and criminal justice system challenges.
An increasing number of minority youth experience contact with the criminal justice system. But how does the expansion of police presence in poor urban communities affect educational outcomes? Previous research points at multiple mechanisms with opposing effects. This article presents the first causal evidence of the impact of aggressive policing on minority youths’ educational performance. Under Operation Impact, the New York Police Department (NYPD) saturated high-crime areas with additional police officers with the mission to engage in aggressive, order-maintenance policing. To estimate the effect of this policing program, we use administrative data from more than 250,000 adolescents age 9 to 15 and a difference-in-differences approach based on variation in the timing of police surges across neighborhoods. We find that exposure to police surges significantly reduced test scores for African American boys, consistent with their greater exposure to policing. The size of the effect increases with age, but there is no discernible effect for African American girls and Hispanic students. Aggressive policing can thus lower educational performance for some minority groups. These findings provide evidence that the consequences of policing extend into key domains of social life, with implications for the educational trajectories of minority youth and social inequality more broadly.
Over the past two decades, criminologists have attempted to better understand the process through which research is used by practitioners and policymakers to identify the conditions that facilitate its policy and practice use. As part of this effort, the current study examines the translational research process and the use of researcher-practitioner partnerships (RPPs) in two state correctional agencies. The methods include interviews with leading national researchers, Florida legislative personnel, and state-level decision makers in adult and juvenile corrections. The findings document barriers, facilitators, and mechanisms involved in the translation process and reveal the effectiveness of RPPs to translate research into policy and practice.
Using nationally representative data, this research examined the associations between indicators of minority threat and juvenile justice processing following a first arrest. At intake, increasing Black presence in the community resulted in leniency, rather than severity. Once adjudicated, the size of the Black population had a nonlinear inverted-U shaped relationship with probability of placement. Increasing Hispanic presence was associated with leniency in disposition, and economic threat was not significantly related outcomes. Indicators of minority threat did not exacerbate outcomes for minority youth. These findings suggest that, contrary to the expectations of minority threat theory, the growing presence of minorities in communities may weaken social control and harsh punishments, particularly once the size of the minority population reaches a critical threshold.
Purpose
Prior studies of criminal sentencing have largely focused on individual-level predictors of sentencing outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of a variety of theoretically derived community measurements of social threat and disadvantage on the criminal sentencing of convicted felons. This analysis permits an evaluation of whether legal ideals such as equality before the law and policy goals of equal treatment for like offenders are achieved.
Design/methodology/approach
The study examines data of individuals sentenced in the state of Florida and community level measurements of racial and ethnic threat and community disadvantage. Hierarchical generalized linear model is used to analyze the effect of these measures on the dichotomous in/out imprisonment variable, and standard hierarchical linear regression analysis is used to model the continuous dependent variable of sentence length.
Findings
The results provide support for the racial threat perspective though not for ethnic threat nor community disadvantage. The findings and their implications are discussed in terms of theory, research and policy.
Practical implications
Racial disparity in criminal justice practices is receiving increasing public and policy attention, as evidenced by the growing Black Lives Matter movement. Regarding sentencing, racial disparity remains a major research and policy question. While the current research and theoretical literature on sentencing is not conclusive, it is clear that race matters. As a result, racial disparity in sentencing needs to be a priority in subsequent “transitional criminology” efforts between researchers and policy makers to identify, explain and ultimately predict exactly how race impacts sentencing, and how to reduce it as a consideration from sentencing.
Originality/value
This study contributes to a growing body of literature that examines the social context of punishments by using several community level measurements of threat and disadvantage, while modeling the two-step sentencing outcome of imprisonment and sentence length.
Objectives
The primary objective of this study is to assess potential variation across Florida’s counties of their implementation of civil citation and the outcomes associated with that implementation.
Methods
Interrupted time-series analysis is used to determine whether the trends in juvenile arrests and the total delinquent population referred to the juvenile justice system (either through arrests or through civil citation) were significantly affected by the implementation of civil citation in each county.
Results
There were immediate and gradual diversion effects of the civil citation program in a number of Florida’s counties. As a result, there is evidence of successful implementation with a few cases of net widening.
Conclusions
While there was variation between counties in their implementation of civil citation, overall, Florida’s civil citation program was found to provide a diversion from arrest rather than a net-widening outcome. The study concludes with the identification of county-specific factors that characterized the local jurisdictions that were able to successfully overcome the major impediments associated with diversion and other reform programs’ implementation fidelity.
The overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minority youth in early stages of juvenile justice processing remains a long-standing concern. The current study uses data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to examine the effects of race and ethnicity on postarrest handling of juvenile cases by the police. Multilevel analyses controlling for extralegal and contextual factors found that disproportionate minority contact (DMC) was not observed for more severe charges, but Hispanic and minority youth facing less severe charges were more likely to be referred to authorities. Because even small disparities in postarrest handling may have a cumulative effect, the findings highlight the continuing need to better understand police officer behaviors and agency processes that result in DMC.
Adolescence is a distinct, yet transient, period of development between childhood and adulthood characterized by increased experimentation and risk-taking, a tendency to discount long-term consequences, and heightened sensitivity to peers and other social influences. A key function of adolescence is developing an integrated sense of self, including individualization, separation from parents, and personal identity. Experimentation and novelty-seeking behavior, such as alcohol and drug use, unsafe sex, and reckless driving, are thought to serve a number of adaptive functions despite their risks. Research indicates that for most youth, the period of risky experimentation does not extend beyond adolescence, ceasing as identity becomes settled with maturity. Much adolescent involvement in criminal activity is part of the normal developmental process of identity formation and most adolescents will mature out of these tendencies. Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems. This imbalance model implies dual systems: one involved in cognitive and behavioral control and one involved in socio-emotional processes. Accordingly adolescents lack mature capacity for self-regulations because the brain system that influences pleasure-seeking and emotional reactivity develops more rapidly than the brain system that supports self-control. This knowledge of adolescent development has underscored important differences between adults and adolescents with direct bearing on the design and operation of the justice system, raising doubts about the core assumptions driving the criminalization of juvenile justice policy in the late decades of the 20th century. It was in this context that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) asked the National Research Council to convene a committee to conduct a study of juvenile justice reform. The goal of Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental Approach was to review recent advances in behavioral and neuroscience research and draw out the implications of this knowledge for juvenile justice reform, to assess the new generation of reform activities occurring in the United States, and to assess the performance of OJJDP in carrying out its statutory mission as well as its potential role in supporting scientifically based reform efforts. © 2013 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
This chapter discusses how black and Latino youth labeled “deviant” are affected by criminalization after coming in contact with the juvenile justice system. The findings are based on ethnographic interviews I conducted in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2002 to 2005. From these data, I argue that black and Latino youth are further stigmatized and “hypercriminalized” on entering the juvenile justice system even when the majority are arrested for nonviolent offenses. Nonviolent juvenile offenders thus experience the full force of direct and indirect punishment and criminalization traditionally aimed at violent offenders. Furthermore, in a time when punitive crime control measures have drastically increased, youth of color experience this hypercriminalization not only from criminal justice institutions but also from non-criminal justice structures traditionally intended to nurture: the school, the family, and the community center. Ultimately, in the era of mass incarceration, a “youth control complex” created by a network of racialized criminalization and punishment deployed from various institutions of control and socialization has formed to manage, control, and incapacitate black and Latino youth.
Nationally, well over half of juvenile justice-involved youth report behavioral health impairment. Although the juvenile justice system may be the first place a youth is screened for behavioral health problems, the system is often ill-prepared to properly treat these youth. In response to the growing number of youth entering the juvenile justice system with behavioral health issues and the lack of proper care in these facilities, many communities have developed diversion programs as an alternative to detention. The current study investigated Ohio’s Behavioral Health Juvenile Justice (BHJJ) program, a diversion program for juvenile justice-involved youth with behavioral health issues that provides evidence-and community-based behavioral health treatment. Results indicated BHJJ was effective at improving behavioral health outcomes, including general functioning and trauma symptomatology, and reducing future delinquency. Analyses also examined the variables that predicted successful treatment completion and future adjudications. Implications for juvenile justice programming and policy are discussed.
Missing from the considerable body of literature on disproportionate minority contact is an examination of the factors that influence risk of juvenile arrest. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, the author examines racial/ethnic disparities in youth arrest, net of self-reported delinquency. Drawing from research using a minority threat perspective, this study examines whether disparities are exacerbated by macro levels of the relative size of the minority population and minority economic inequality. The results indicate Black youth have a higher risk of arrest than White youth in all contextual climates, but this disparity is magnified in predominantly non-Black communities. Differences between Hispanic and White youths’ risk of arrest did not reach statistical significance or vary across communities. The findings failed to yield support for the threat perspective but strongly supported the benign neglect thesis. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.
Research SummaryWe examined race-group differences in the effects of how felony defendants are treated at earlier decision points in case processing on case outcomes. Multilevel analyses of 3,459 defendants nested within 123 prosecutors and 34 judges in a large, northern U.S. jurisdiction revealed significant main and interaction effects of a defendant's race on bond amounts, pretrial detention, and nonsuspended prison sentences, but no significant effects on charge reductions and prison sentence length. Evidence of greater “cumulative disadvantages” for Black defendants in general and young Black men in particular was revealed by significant indirect race effects on the odds of pretrial detention via type of attorney, prior imprisonment, and bond amounts, as well as by indirect race effects on prison sentences via pretrial detention and prior imprisonment.Policy ImplicationsThe consideration of cumulative disadvantage is important for a more complete understanding of the overincarceration of Blacks in the United States. Toward the end of reducing racial disparities in the distribution of prison sentences, courts might (a) reduce reliance on money bail, (b) consider bail amounts for indigent defendants more carefully, and (c) increase the structure of pretrial decision making to reduce the stronger effects of imprisonment history and type of attorney on the odds of pretrial detention for Black suspects.
In this study, we examine race, sex, and self-reported arrest histories (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY; N = 7,335) for the period 1997 through 2008 covering cumulative arrest histories through ages 18 and 23. The analysis produces three key findings: (1) males have higher cumulative prevalence of arrest than females; and (2) there are important race differences in the probability of arrest for males but not for females. Assuming the missing cases are missing at random, about 30% of black males have experienced at least one arrest by age 18 (vs. about 22% for white males); by age 23 about 49% of black males have been arrested (vs. about 38% for white males). Earlier research using the NLSY showed that the risk of arrest by age 23 was 30%, with nonresponse bounds [25.3%, 41.4%]. This study indicates that the risk of arrest is not evenly distributed across the population. Future research should focus on the identification and management of collateral risks that often accompany arrest experiences.
Objectives
The racial threat perspective argues that racial minorities are subjected to greater punishment in places with large or growing minority populations. However, prior research has focused largely on Black populations while devoting limited attention to potential “Latino threat” or “immigrant threat” effects. To address these gaps, this study explores the effects of racial, ethnic, and immigrant threat on sentence disposition (jail, prison, or community corrections) and sentence length.
Methods
Using 2000 through 2006 data from the Florida Department of Corrections Guideline database, we use multilevel modeling techniques to explore the effects of racial, ethnic, and immigrant threat on state criminal sentencing.
Results
The results provide support for racial/ethnic threat theory among Black but not Latino defendants. Black defendants are more likely to be sentenced to prison and are given longer sentences in counties with growing Black populations. In contrast, Latino sentences are not significantly influenced by Latino population growth. Results provide no support for immigrant threat positions.
Conclusions
Overall, our findings offer a complex picture for racial/ethnic and immigrant threat. However, one pattern remains clear. Within Florida courts, Black defendants continue to be the prime targets for effects of racial threat and resulting disadvantages in criminal sentencing.
This paper provides an illustrative application of Goodman's log-linear analysis to the complex analytical problems encountered by criminologists in research on the relationship between social disadvantage and criminalization. Substantively, the analysis deals with the question of whether and to what extent such variables as an arrested individual's age, race, occupational status, and record of incarceration influence the type and severity of the case disposition, and, if such variables are found to have effects, whether that effect is direct or mediated through effects of the nature of the offenses charged. The results of the analysis suggest that assertions of legal system bias against the socially disadvantaged require better evidence than has previously been offered in their support. Further research on the relationship between social disadvantage and criminalization must recognize the complexity of that relationship not only in thEory but equally in the design and execution of research. Log-linear analysis of multidimensional contingency tables appears to be an extremely useful tool for specifying the degree and nature of that complexity.
Despite extensive sociological research, little evidence exists on how court officials' perceptions of offenders influence their classification, assessment, and final recommendations for punishment. We examine the links among these factors, focusing specifically on the race of the accused. Our analysis combines information from probation officers' written accounts of juvenile offenders and their crimes and court records about the offenders. We find pronounced differences in officers' attributions about the causes of crime by white versus minority youths. Further, these differences contribute significantly to differential assessments of the risk of reoffending and to sentence recommendations, even after adjusting for legally relevant case and offender characteristics. These results suggest that differential attributions about the causes of crime act as a mediating factor between race and sentencing recommendations.
The "conflict perspective" has generated considerable critical interest in the mechanisms of criminal sanctioning. Among the hypotheses generated by conflict criminology is the proposition that "when sanctions are imposed, the most severe sanctions will be imposed on persons in the lowest social class" (Chambliss and Seidman, 1971:475). This paper affords an empirical test of that proposition, which has been widely accepted as true despite the absence of substantial supporting evidence. Prison sentences received by 10,488 inmates for a total of seventeen specific offenses, within three southeastern states are examined. Product-moment correlations between a defendant's SES and the sentence received provide no support for the conflict proposition, and this conclusion is further strengthened when controls are introduced for "prior record" and demographic characteristics of the defendant. Multiple correlation and beta coefficients are also examined with similar conclusions. Implications for the explanation of criminal sanctioning institutions by conflict mechanisms are suggested.
Nearly half a century after Thorsten Sellin (1928) first introduced the topic for research, the issue of discrimination in judicial sentencing is still very much with us. Thus, Richard Quinney (1970: 142), among the more provocative critics of our system of criminal justice, observes that Obviously judicial decisions are not made uniformly. Decisions are made according to a host of extra-legal factors, including the age of the offender, his race, and social class. Perhaps the most obvious example of judicial discretion occurs in the handling of cases of persons from minority groups. Negroes, in comparison to whites, are convicted with lesser evidence and sentenced to more severe punishments.