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NCJJ Studies an Unexplored Area of DMC for OJJDP - Racial Disparity in Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Act Violations

Resources / Report / NCJJ Studies an Unexplored Area of DMC for OJJDP - Racial Disparity in Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Act Violations

The authors discuss their study of data from three states – collected to monitor compliance with the core requirements of the Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention (JJDP) Act – to see if violations show any evidence of racial disparity. Specifically, the study was interested in whether there was evidence of minority over-representation or disproportionality in violations of the JJDP Act’s holding requirements – regarding deinstitutionalization of status offenders (DSO) , or jail removal (from adult jails or lockups). Levels of disproportionality found, for black, Hispanic, and white youth, were much less when comparing arrest-based rates rather than population-based rates. For DSO violations, statistically significant differences were found for Hispanic youth; for jail removal violations, statistically significant differences were found for both black and Hispanic youth.

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