Juvenile Justice Decision‐Making Before and After the Implementation of the Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Mandate

Abstract

The disproportionate minority confinement (DMC) mandate was included in the reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act in 1988 and required states to assess the extent DMC was evident and to develop strategies to address the issue. The DMC mandate was designed to achieve equal treatment of youth within the juvenile justice system. In the present study, we analyzed the predictors of juvenile justice decision‐making before and after the mandate to determine the impact of possible changes in the relative influence of legal criteria and extralegal considerations, especially race, on case outcomes in one juvenile court. The findings indicate that the factors impacting decision‐making, for the most part, did not change in significance or relative impact though some unanticipated race effects were found at judicial disposition following the mandate.