DMC Contributing Mechanisms

One of the more disturbing aspects of the DMC issue is that the impact on minority youth as a group tends to accumulate, rather than dissipate, through the system. This phenomenon is displayed in at least two different ways.

Simple Accumulation occurs when a higher rate of arrest for minority youth is subsequently followed by a lower rate of diversion, higher rates of formal processing as delinquent, etc. In most stages of the juvenile justice system, minority youth (particularly black and Hispanic youth) appear to receive handling that is either harsher than their white counterparts or equal to their white counterparts. Thus, although the differential treatment at any particular stage may appear “small,” the cumulative impact across the entire juvenile justice system may be relatively large. The impact here is essentially equivalent to compound interest—a 10-percent difference in volume of activity (RRI value = 1.10) that occurs at each of eight decision stages in the juvenile justice system will accumulate into a rate of DMC that is more than double the level of overall contact for that minority group.

Impacts On Later Decisions occurs when race and ethnicity indirectly influence decisionmaking at later stages of the juvenile justice system. Studies have indicated that decisions made at earlier stages, such as detention, affect outcomes at later stages and, in particular, judicial disposition. That is, detention strongly predicts more severe treatment at judicial disposition. Although minority youth and white youth who have been detained may be treated similarly, because the former group is more likely to be detained, they receive more severe dispositions than do their white counterparts. Consequently, race or ethnicity may not directly influence judicial disposition, but its effects may be masked, operating through a racially linked criterion of pre-adjudicatory detention (e.g., Leiber, and Fox, 2005).