It’s Time to DO Something About Minority Youth Incarceration

It’s Time to DO Something About Minority Youth Incarceration

If ever there were a good news/bad news situation, this is one of them. A new Kids Count report, “Reducing Youth Incarceration in the United States,” indicates that our rate of incarcerating young people has dropped by more than 40 percent over a 15-year period, with no decrease in public safety. However, the U.S. still leads all industrialized countries in locking up its youth, the majority of whom are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses like truancy, minor property offenses, and technical probation violations. What’s more, African American youth are nearly five times more likely to be incarcerated than whites, and Latinos and American Indians are two to three times more likely.

And how’s this for a startling statistic? One year at Princeton University = $37,000, while a year in a New Jersey state prison = $44,000*. Seven thousand dollars MORE per year for jail than for an education! Yet that’s where we’re sending our minority youth by the truckload.

I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking it’s time we stop accepting the fact that minority youth are overrepresented at every level of the justice system, from initial contact with police all the way through incarceration. 2008 estimates put the numbers of black youth at 16 percent of the general population, but they accounted for 30 percent of juvenile court referrals, 38 percent in juvenile placement, and 58 percent of youth in adult prisons.

Part of the problem is the framing of the problem. According to a highlight of a report in The Future of Children: Juvenile Justice, Volume 18, Number 2, Fall 2008, by Hilary Hodgdo, some argue that the disproportionate numbers are due to “differences in how minorities are treated by the justice system, with minority youth receiving harsher scrutiny and treatment than whites.” Others contend that minority youth simply commit more crime.

In his chapter in The Future of Children, “Disproportionate Minority Contact,” Alex Piquero argues both claims have merit, yet both are oversimplified. Piquero urges researchers and policymakers to move beyond the debate over which cause matters more. He suggests that policymakers can encourage and provide funding for research examining both patterns of offending by race and ethnicity and causes of disproportionate contact. This research should include:

• Identifying risk factors for offending and whether they differ by race/ethnic group and social/cultural environments.
• Gathering more data on ethnic and racial discrepancies in police practices, perceptions, selection, and processing by the juvenile justice system. It is insufficient to simply note that disproportionate minority contact exists; we must begin to identify at which point in the justice system discrepancies occur and who perpetuates them. 
• Paying particular attention to the treatment of minority youth by police in order to determine why ethnic and racial disparities exist at the initial stage of juvenile justice processing. Surprisingly little research has been conducted on disproportionate minority contact at the police level and thus policy has not focused on this issue as much as it should. 
• Researching juvenile offending trends based on racial and ethnic groups rather than the simple categories of black and white.

Recommended Policy Changes

Piquero further suggests system-wide policy changes, including:

• Providing education and training to police and juvenile justice staff about cultural sensitivity and risk factors for youth offenders.
• Implementing state and/or federal initiatives to reduce the harm caused by youth justice system contact in an effort to reduce the likelihood of continued involvement in the system.

Hodgdo notes that the MacArthur Foundation’s Model for Change Initiative, currently operating in four states and influencing the justice system in a dozen others, has focused on making juvenile justice systems more rational, fair, effective, and developmentally sound. It’s high time that other corporations, foundations, philanthropic organizations, communities, and concerned citizens jump onboard this important cause. The future of our nation depends on it!

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ALBERT MENSAH is a champion of opportunity and achieving one’s dreams. Rising from humble beginnings in Ghana, Africa, Albert has become one of the world’s leading student motivational speakers, regularly presenting to groups such as FCCLA, FFA, FBLA, DECA, 4-H, and numerous school assemblies and student council groups. Visit his website to book him to speak at your student assembly, career day, or state or national teachers’ conference.