Youth Radio: Racial and Ethnic Disparities Juvenile Justice Data Map
,March 17th, 2010
A new interactive map of juvenile justice disparities across the country has become available to the public. The tool also provides state-by-state statistics, like California's drug arrests between 2003 and 2006, which show that the number of African American youth arrested increased by six over that period, while the number of Latino youth arrested for similar offenses decreased by 21.
The San Francisco based nonprofit W. Haywood Burns Institute (BI) released the “Racial and Ethnic Disparities Juvenile Justice Data Map” Wednesday. The Institute reports this the first time state-by-state data has been made available to the public. The map contains the following information for each state.
One-Day Count Incarceration Data: Publicly available counts and rates of youth in juvenile residential placement facilities on any given day by state, collected every two years from 1997-2006. The BI has displayed the information by the race/ethnicity of the juveniles.
Annual Juvenile Justice System Data by Decision-Making Point: The rate of involvement of youth in the juvenile justice system by decision-making point (arrest, court referral, secure detention, transfer, etc), where available, at the State and County levels.
Other Information Including: 1) Each State’s Three Year Plan for reducing Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC); 2) Contact information for each State’s Juvenile Justice Specialist and State DMC Coordinator; 3) States’ statutory guidelines for detention and age of juvenile jurisdiction; 4) Information about each State Advisory Group (SAG), which is responsible for monitoring and supporting their state’s compliance with the Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention Act (JJDPA).
Some notable data from a quick scan of the map's California statistics:
-In 2006, there were 3,024 Latino youth arrested for various offenses—making them the racial group with the highest number of arrests.
-The number of black and Latino youth incarcerated continues to increase.
-In 2007, there were 21,201 secure detentions of Latino youth, almost double the number of cases involving black youth.
