Social Control, Law, Crime, and Deviance Commons^™

Predicting Secure Detention Placement For African-American Juvenile Offenders: Addressing The Disproportionate Minority Confinement Problem, Christopher A. Mallett, Patricia A. Stoddard Dare

Social Work Faculty Publications

Disproportionate minority contact and confinement (DMC) are significant problems within the juvenile justice system in the United States. Minority youth are more often arrested, court referred, placed in locked facilities, and transferred to adult criminal courts. In fact, African American youth are 6 times more likely than White youth to experience a secure facility placement. Standardized risk assessments have been used, in part, to reduce these biased placement outcomes. The purpose of this article is to determine if DMC impacts secure detention placement even when a standardized risk assessment is used to determine youths' risks and needs in 1 Midwest …