Race, Pre- and Postdetention, and Juvenile Justice Decision Making

Abstract

A detailed examination was conducted of the factors associated with pre- and postadjudication secure detention, including secure detention as a dispositional sentence and the effects of secure detention on decision making that further contribute to cumulative disadvantage for African Americans. The research was based on interpretations of the symbolic threat thesis, with emphasis on the stereotyping of African Americans as threatening, delinquent, and/or in need of confinement, to study decision making in one juvenile court jurisdiction. The results reveal that legal factors were most often predictors of each type of secure detention and decision making at other stages, but so too was race individually and in combination with legal and extralegal considerations and indirectly through secure detention. The relationships, however, did not always result in disadvantageous outcomes.