Jim Devine wrote:
> the author, Scott Shuger, was simply asking questions about these issues. I
> was hoping for answers to these questions rather than name-calling based on
> a partial reading.
The Slate report must have been based on the following article, which
Doug fwd to lbo.
====
New York Times - April 26, 2000
Racial Disparities Are Pervasive in Justice System, Report Says
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
lack and Hispanic youths are treated more severely than white
teenagers charged with comparable crimes at every step of the
juvenile justice system, according to a comprehensive report released
yesterday that was sponsored by the Justice Department and six of the
nation's leading foundations.
The report found that minority youths are more likely than their
white counterparts to be arrested, held in jail, sent to juvenile or
adult court for trial, convicted and given longer prison terms,
leading to a situation in which the impact is magnified with each
additional step into the juvenile justice system.
In some cases, the disparities are stunning. Among young people who
have not been sent to a juvenile prison before, blacks are more than
six times as likely as whites to be sentenced by juvenile courts to
prison. For those young people charged with a violent crime who have
not been in juvenile prison previously, black teenagers are nine
times more likely than whites to be sentenced to juvenile prison. For
those charged with drug offenses, black youths are 48 times more
likely than whites to be sentenced to juvenile prison.
Similarly, white youths charged with violent offenses are
incarcerated for an average of 193 days after trial, but blacks are
incarcerated an average of 254 days and Hispanics are incarcerated an
average of 305 days.
"The implications of these disparities are very serious," said Mark
Soler, the president of the Youth Law Center, a research and advocacy
group in Washington who also is the leader of the coalition of civil
rights and youth advocacy organizations that organized the research
project.
"These disparities accumulate, and they make it hard for members of
the minority community to complete their education, get jobs and be
good husbands and fathers," Mr. Soler said.
The report, "And Justice for Some," does not address why such sharp
racial imbalances exist. But Mr. Soler suggested that the cause lay
not so much in overt discrimination as in "the stereotypes that the
decision makers at each point of the system rely on." A judge looking
at a young person, Mr. Soler said, may be influenced by the
defendant's baggy jeans or the fact that he does not have a father.
In the past, when studies have found racial disparities in the number
of adult black or Hispanic prison inmates, critics have asserted that
the cause was simply that members of minorities committed a
disproportionate number of crimes. That may be true, Mr. Soler said,
but it does not account for the extreme disparities found in the
report, nor for disparities at each stage of the juvenile justice
process.
"When you look at this data, it is undeniable that race is a factor,"
Mr. Soler said.
The report, the most thorough of its kind, is based on national and
state data initially compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation;
the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, a Justice
Department agency; the Census Bureau and the National Center for
Juvenile Justice, the research arm of the National Council of
Juvenile and Family Court Judges.
The report was written by Eileen Poe-Yamagata and Michael A. Jones,
senior researchers with the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency, in San Francisco.
An unusual feature of the report is that its costs were underwritten
by the Justice Department and several leading foundations: the Ford
Foundation; the MacArthur Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation; the
Walter Johnson Foundation; the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which
specializes in issues relating to young people; and the Center on
Crime, Communities and Culture of George Soros's Open Society
Institute.
Hugh B. Price, the president of the National Urban League, said that
"this report leaves no doubt that we are faced with a very serious
national civil rights issue, virtually making our system juvenile
injustice."
Mr. Soler and the coalition that put the report together want
Congress to give the Justice Department at least $100 million to
reduce racial disparities and require states to spend a quarter of
their federal juvenile justice grants on the issue.
A spokesman for Representative Bill McCollum, the Florida Republican
who is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee
on Crime, said he would have no comment because he had not seen the
report.
Mr. McCollum sponsored a bill last year that would have increased the
number of juveniles tried in adult court.
Nationally, the report found that blacks under the age of 18 make up
15 percent of their age group, but 26 percent of those young people
arrested, 31 percent of those sent to juvenile court, 44 percent of
those detained in juvenile jails and 32 percent of those found guilty
of being a delinquent. Similarly, young blacks account for 46 percent
of all juveniles tried in adult criminal courts, 40 percent of those
sent to juvenile prisons and 58 percent of all juveniles confined in
adult prisons.
