Race, prior offending, and juvenile court outcomes

Abstract

Both theory and research in the study of race in the juvenile justice system have attempted to identify the contexts in which race matters. The objectives of the present research are to examine the roles that race and the history of prior offending, individually and in combination, have on juvenile justice outcomes at detention, intake, adjudication and judicial disposition. An interpretation of the focal concerns/loosely coupled perspective is used as a backdrop to analyze data from a Midwestern county juvenile court to address these objectives. While race and the history of prior offending individually explained case outcomes, the interrelationship between the two with court decision-making, for the most part, was not found to exist. The overall results suggest that prior offending may not be racialized as hypothesized in this juvenile court but being black by itself results in unjust treatment.