NCJ Number
249081
Journal
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency Volume: 52 Issue: 2 Dated: March 2015 Pages: 181-212
Date Published
2015
Length
32 pages
Annotation
Drawing on focal concerns theory, as well as scholarship on the juvenile court's mandate to consider youth culpability and amenability to treatment, this study developed 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, particularly Black males.
Abstract
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 probationare examined. 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. Florida juvenile court referral data and multinomial logistic regression analyses were used to examine multicategory disposition and "subdisposition" measures. (Publisher abstract modified)