Legal and Extralegal Factors Affecting Minority Overrepresentation in Virginia’s Juvenile Justice System: A Mixed-Method Study

Abstract

This study examined legal and extralegal factors, specifically race, and their effects on processing and sanctions for 2,233 African American and Caucasian males in Virginia's juvenile justice system. Qualitative findings from in-depth interviews with juvenile judges, Commonwealth's attorneys, defense attorneys, police officers, juveniles and their families triangulate the quantitative findings. Crime severity was the only factor which affected the likelihood of diversion; whereas race, grade repeated, prior record, and crime severity increased the likelihood of incarceration through two logistic regression models. Stakeholders added discussion regarding family structure and education. As social work practice intersects with juvenile justice through multiple avenues, the implications of these findings are discussed.

Exploring Disproportionate Minority Contact in the Juvenile Justice System Over the Year Following First Arrest

“…The goal of the present study was to examine the mechanisms underlying disproportionate minority contact (DMC) in the juvenile justice system. Prior efforts have highlighted that DMC can occur due to legal factors such as the severity and amount of criminal offending, in addition to extralegal factors such as race, socioeconomic status, neighborhood quality, and age at arrest (McCarter, 2009). In this study, we isolated the specific role of race among Black, White, and Latino youth in the justice system by accounting for both legal and other extralegal factors.…”

Making Men Out of Boys? Ethnic Differences in Juvenile Violent Offending and the Role of Gender Role Orientations

“…Ethnic differences in juvenile violent crime have been repeatedly observed in several countries across the globe (Rabold & Baier, 2011). In the United States, boys with an African American or Hispanic American background are overrepresented in the official crime figures (e.g., Engen, Steen, & Bridges, 2002; McCarter, 2009; Rossiter & Rossiter, 2009; Stahl, Finnegan, & Kang, 2007). In most European countries, ethnic minority boys with a non-Western background are overrepresented among juvenile offenders, such as Turks in Germany, Algerians in France, and Moroccans in Belgium (Esterle-Hedibel, 2001; Von Gostomski, 2003; Put & Walgrave, 2006).…”

Reglas de Brasilia: justicia para transformar la vulnerabilidad en igualdad

“…Por ejemplo, la práctica profesional de los(as) trabajadores(as) sociales interacciona con la justicia juvenil de múltiples formas, mediante el desarrollo de informes previos a la sentencia, servicios de libertad condicional o evaluaciones de admisión (Curbelo, 2008;McCarter, 2009;Navarro, Botija y Uceda, 2016).…”