1.4 UNDERSTANDING SYSTEMIC RACISM AND RACIAL INEQUITY JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM INVOLVEMENT

Abstract

Black, Latinx, and Native American (BLNA) youth are disproportionately overrepresented and have been for several decades. Barriers to free and appropriate educational resources and community-based mental health and substance use disorder treatment are among the drivers that potentiate disproportionate contact and confinement. This presentation includes a review of literature on juvenile justice and racial disproportionality, with particular focus on relevant legislative trends to address this problem and risk factors for justice involvement that are amplified by systemic racism. Application of the Sequential Intercept Model, which was developed to describe 5 points of justice interception, will be explored to see how this trajectory of juvenile justice contact maps onto the Juvenile Justice Behavioral Health Services Cascade, a framework for measuring gaps between treatment need and receipt. Findings from research conducted by the presenter and colleagues investigating promising practices that apply antiracist praxis in working with justice-involved youth will be presented. BLNA youth are more likely than White youth to have contact with the juvenile justice system and are also less likely to receive treatment for substance use and mental health disorders, which has implications for initial justice contact as well as sustained entrenchment in this system. Numerous studies highlight the long-term adverse health effects of incarceration on justice-involved youth. There are negative effects of justice systems having contact on youth and family well-being. Legislative policies that target race inequity have promise in reducing racial disparities. Given the disruption that justice contact at any stage poses to the healthy psychosocial development of youth, child and adolescent psychiatrists should be at the forefront of advocacy efforts that apply structural competency, antiracist, and trauma-informed frameworks for justice-involved populations. These include primary prevention, school-based and integrated substance use and mental health services, as well as community-based partnership approaches with justice-involved youth, their families, and organizations that serve them to identify and operationalize best practices for engagement.