Disproportionate Minority Contact and Racism in the US

Abstract

Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) refers to the proportional overrepresentation of minority youth at each step of the juvenile justice system. This book addresses the issue of color-blind racism through an examination of the circular logic used by the juvenile justice system to criminalize non-White youth. The book begins by introducing how structural racism affected the lives of non-White youth through their interactions with the juvenile justice system. It finds how differential treatment is the cause of DMC. The book explains the concept of Occam's razor, which involves racial or ethnic inequalities across society. It looks into the opposing explanations for DMC and focuses on law enforcement contact with juveniles through arrests and citations. Disproportionate minority contact defines the overrepresentation of minorities throughout the juvenile justice system, while overrepresentation, on the other hand, implies the comparison of racial and ethnic characteristics of people in the juvenile justice system. The book analyses intake decisions and outcomes in the juvenile justice system, and covers juvenile self-reports of deviant and criminal behaviour. It discusses issues seen in the data of DMC and tackles the process of interviewing people amongst the minority overrepresentation in the juvenile justice system. Drawing on original data, including interviews with court and probation officers and juvenile self-reports, the book calls for a need to understand racial and ethnic inequality in the juvenile justice system from a structural perspective rather than simply at the level of individual bias. In doing so, the book contributes to larger discussions on how race operates in the United States.