Reducing Harms to Boys and Young Men of Color from Criminal Justice System Involvement

Akiva M. Liberman and Jocelyn Fontaine February 2015 Boys and young men of color are disproportionately represented as criminal victims and offenders and are overrepresented in all aspects of the juvenile justice and criminal justice systems. This overrepresentation, which can devastate the lives of young men, their families, and their communities, is most acute for African Americans. Recent events have underscored the continuing issue of race and the uniquely fraught position of African Americans in the national consciousness concerning crime and justice in the United States. Late in 2014, public demonstrations were held nationwide after unarmed black men died at the hands of police in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City. These protests escalated further when grand juries declined to indict police officers on criminal charges. The relevant research evidence on this topic is most extensive concerning African American youth, although there is also a growing body of research concerning Latino youth. We sometimes discuss the combined group of black and Latino youth here as “youth of color.” Although youth of both groups face some common issues, there are also important differences in both the nature of the problem and possi-ble solutions. There is also an acute problem for Native Americans, especially on tribal lands, although this has different dynamics and is not well represented in either the data or the research literature.1 Overview and Summary Incarceration in the United States has exploded since 1980; the resulting situation is often referred to as the era of mass incarceration (National Academy of Sciences 2014). This mass incarceration has been particularly concentrated among poor and poorly educated black men. For example, among high school dropouts, almost a third of black men ages 20–40 were incarcerated on a given day in 2000, compared with 6 percent of Latinos or whites; by their early 30s, the lifetime risk of imprisonment of male high school dropouts was an astonishing 59 percent for blacks, compared with 11.2 percent for whites (Western 2006, 19 and 27). RACE, ETHNICITY, AND GENDER Reducing Harms to Boys and Young Men of Color from Criminal Justice System Involvement At the justice system level, aspects of the overrepresentation of youth of color include law enforcement practices that focus on and respond differently to young men of color and that increase their juvenile justice and criminal justice involvement. In addition, police seem to apply greater use of force to people of color, particularly boys and young men, as exemplified by episodic incidents of unarmed black men dying at the hands of police. Increased involvement with the justice system tends to interfere with school completion and employment in a negative cascade. Harsh sentencing policies then exacerbate any disproportionalities at entry in the justice system, and perverse financial incentives may incentivize longer and harsher sentences than necessary. For juveniles in particular, the justice system is used to address problems best handled elsewhere, such as school discipline issues; in addition, this pathway into the justice system is used disproportion-ately for youth of color. All too often the justice system is seen as a benevolent route to services that are in the child’s best interests, especially when services are not otherwise easily available or funded. But this involuntary route to services delivery comes with high costs, including detrimental labeling effects, along with the risk of further sanctioning and justice system involvement for noncompliance with treatment and service mandates. At the community level, boys and young men of color are more likely to live in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage in which the ability to use informal social controls over crime and disorder are weakened and where perceptions of police illegitimacy interfere with the ability to harness formal resources to control crime and disorder. Children in high-crime communities are exposed to high levels of violence as both victims and witnesses. With young men of color stopped by police, arrested, and incarcerated at disproportionate levels, their children are more often exposed to the trauma and humiliation of parental arrest and incarceration. Similarly, Latino children of immigrants are disproportionately affected by parental arrest and incarceration by immigration authorities. Schools, which have enormous potential as prevention and intervention settings, also sometimes take harsh approaches to discipline, including suspensions. Such approaches are also used more often with youth of color. The increased presence of law enforcement in schools also seems to increase the likelihood of referral to court for infractions that otherwise are managed within the school. Although it is commonly believed that poverty, community disorganization, and troubled families are root causes for criminal justice system involvement, in the era of