Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Police Handling of Juvenile Arrests

Running head: Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Police Handling of Juvenile Arrests
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Police Handling of Juvenile Arrests
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Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Police Handling of Juvenile Arrests1
Introduction:
The racial and ethnic minority in the juvenile justice is an eminent social issue. The
recent study by National Incident Based Reporting System has incurred upon the fact and the
data that have been produced on the post arrest of the juvenile cases by the police have been
increased systematically over the past few years. According to a recent study, the youth
section of the society belonging to the minority section of the society are increasingly
outnumbering the juvenile crime rates performed by the youth section belonging to the
majority of the society. The issue has not only become the concern for the police officers
handling the cases, but at the same time it has become one of the major concerning factor for
the social thinkers and the social activists. The activists have come up with various
explanations to fit the current data. The most important of them are the discrepancies in the
jurisdictional policies, and certain police practices and certain equality and minority treatment
by the police have aggravated the situation in the country. According to a current study the
Black youth of United States represent 14% of the total population in the country, however,
36% of the black youth contribute in the juvenile crime reports (Claus, Vidal, and Harmon,
2018). According to the social activists, the relation between race, ethnicity and the juvenile
justice system is very complex and this relationship can vary from extra- legal, incident
based, across age and gender, may depend upon the neighborhood contexts, and also upon the
contextual factors (Claus, Vidal, and Harmon, 2018). Also, the lack of samples, posited
geographically, act as limiting factor for the describing or incurring upon the reasons for or
impacts of disproportionate minority contact.
Therefore, the purpose of this study is to understand, integrate and extend the research
based on the disproportionate minority contact, in the juvenile justice system. The following
study has especially focused on the NIBRS data on the impacts of race and ethnicity, and also

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Police Handling of Juvenile Arrests2
on the contextual factors of the post arrest scenarios as handled by the police. The study will
hypothesize that the crime rates done by the Black and the Hispanic youth are more likely to
be referred as juvenile crime justice system as compared with the crime rate done by the
White and Non- Hispanic youth.
To conduct the study, the theories related to the Juvenile Justice system and the
disproportionate minority contact will be analyzed and at the same time a study will be
conducted to understand the impact of the disproportionate minority contact.
Literature:
Thee literature refers to the plethora of research work made on the task. It is found,
there are two theoretical frameworks that have been developed upon the disproportionate
minority contact. Firstly, as per the differential involvement hypothesis, the disproportionate
minority contact is primarily attributed to the involvement of the minority youth into the
criminal activities and offenses. It is often seen that the low socio- economic status of the
people and the poor educational attainment, the lack of employment and the abandoned
neighborhood are the most common factors, enlisted as the reasons that contribute as the
prime factors of increased reasons for crime rates (Claus, Vidal, and Harmon, 2018).
Therefore, the studies have propounded that the reduction or the elimination of such factors
will decrease the juvenile crime rates in the society. Therefore, as according to the differential
involvement hypothesis, the contextual and the extralegal attributes may contribute in
reducing the ethnic and racial disparities as perceived in the justice processing.
Another theory, the Comprehensive Reviews, propound different reviews of literature.
The comprehensive reviews, that has its roots in the social conflict theories, states that the
contextual factors alone, do not contribute in the disparities, rather the social identities, the
social stereotypes, and the differences in the social selection process, all contribute in the