Racial Disparity Gap In The Juvenile Justice System --- exacerbated by COVID-19

Yvonne Lian, 2021

During the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, the number of children incarcerated in the juvenile justice system plummeted — by an astounding 24% just in the first month of the pandemic, and hitting an all time low since the 1980s (Hager, 2021). However, the decreasing rate of incarceration is not egalitarian for all races: while the number of white youths was historically low in detention centers, the number of Black and Latino youth in the system has risen (Hager, 2021). Though racial inequality has long existed in youth detention, the gap, exaggerated by Covid, is wider than ever. In many facilities, almost the entire population are Black and Latino (Hager, 2021). The disparity of race in the juvenile justice system has been long existing. According to data collected by Rovner (2021) from the Sentencing project, in 2019, 41% of youths in placement are Black, even though Black Americans comprise only 15% of all youth in the United States. Black youths are also more than four times as likely to be detained in juvenile facilities than their white peers (Rovner, 2021). This startling gap leads to the question: Where does the racial disparity gap in the juvenile justice system come from?

Racial biases within the educational system may be one of the factors that contribute to the overrepresentation of African Americans in the juvenile justice system. In a growing number of works, researchers explain the “school-to-prison pipeline” — a phenomenon by which students who receive exclusionary discipline, such as suspension and expulsion, are particularly likely to drop out from school and subsequently get arrested and end up in juvenile detention facilities (Lerner & Galambos, 1998; Skiba, Michael, Nardo, & Petterson, 2002). In fact, according to a longitudinal study of 1354 students, a child who receives exclusionary discipline is two times more likely to be arrested within the same month compared with a child who had not been suspended or expelled (Monahan, VanDerhei, Bechtold, & Cauffman, 2014). Black youths enter the pipeline more often, perhaps due to exclusionary discipline practices disproportionately target ting stigmatized youths. Although African American students represent roughly 17% of the student population, they account for 34% of all suspensions in 2000 (U.S. Department of Education, 2001). Black students are not only disciplined more frequently but also more severely (Browne, Losen, & Wald, 2002; Skiba & Knesting, 2001) than white students for the same offenses (Okonofua & Eberhardt, 2015). These statistics highlight the racial bias in the education system and particularly in school discipline.

Within a criminal justice context, research has shown that racial bias in punishment can actually be exacerbated by the stereotypicality and prototypicality of Black defendants. Black people are commonly stereotyped as hostile and dangerous (Williams & Mohammed, 2013); these unconscious and automatic associations about the racial groups can result in increased culpability judgements. The priming effect occurs when an individual’s exposure to certain stimuli influences his or her subsequent reactions without being conscious of the connection. In the case of racial priming in the justice system, police officers and juvenile probation officers who were primed with Black related words, such as ”Harlem" or “dreadlocks,” identified a young defendant as more culpable and endorse a harsher punishment than when primed with neutral words (Graham & Lowery, 2004). Visual stereotypicality of Black defendants also heightens the association between Blackness and criminality. Black defendants whose physical features were rated as more racially representative, such as wider noses and darker skin tones, were more likely to have received the death penalty than those with less racially stereotypical features (Eberhardt, Davies, Purdie-Vaughns, & Johnson, 2006). Another kind of visual stereotypicality, clothing style, may also serve to visually enhance or reduce perceived stereotypicality of a defendant. Hoodies, for example, are perceived as threatening, and are associated with criminality, danger, and “thugs,” especially when worn by Black males (Minchillo, 2012). In addition, baggy sweatshirts, bandanas, baseball caps, and baggy jeans — common Black clothing in societal imagination — are similarly associated with threat and a “criminal stereotype” (MacLin & Herrera, 2006). These prototypical Black clothings are strongly associated with lower class people and with crime. People wearing professional attire, on the other hand, is thought of as less threatening than those wearing casual attire (MacLin and Herrera, 2006). These researchers hypothesize that such attire is often associated with white middle class people, of a higher status and social class that is distant from gangsters and street crime; professional-looking Black men are seen as less prototypical of their group, and can therefore be seen as less threatening (MacLin and Herrera, 2006). Such danger-related perception of clothing is reflected in shooter-bias. Black men who were wearing “Black-associated” clothing are also more likely to be mistakenly shot in simulations (Kahn & Davies, 2017). Theses studies show that casual attire, compared to professional attire, increases the implicit association between Black men and menace or trouble.

In order to mitigate such biases, awareness-raising interventions are a common strategy that organizations often use to reduce discrimination. Studies have tested the efficiency of short- term educational interventions designed to reduce biases, though results have been mixed. Educational intervention, contextual information on the prevalence of gender bias in student evaluations of teachers, helped reduce gender bias in teacher evaluations, especially by male students (Boring & Philippe, 2021). Additionally, on the issue of marginalized communities, contextual information about indigenous residential schools, was useful to increase recognition of systematic harm, reconcile intergroup tensions and foster empathy for the marginalized indigenous people (Neufeld, Starzyk, Boese, Efimoff, & Wright, 2021). Concerning racial bias, White students who learned about diversity in US societies exhibited significantly less prejudice and made more favorable judgments about Blacks (Chang, 2002) However, statistical information about racial disparities in the justice system may paradoxically bolster implicit racial biases. Studies have found that informing White Americans of racially disproportionate incarceration will reinforce their support for the policies that help perpetuate those disparities (Hetey & Eberhardt, 2014) due to rationalization of racial disparity as evidence of racial criminality character (Hetey & Eberhardt, 2018).

Previous studies have established that racial disparities exist in the educational system with Black students receiving harsher exclusionary discipline. Studies have also shown that increased stereotypicality of a defendant — including Black-associated clothing styles — strengthens the association between Black men and danger. To combat these associations and their punitive consequences researchers have found that contextual informations have the possibility of reducing implicit bias in evaluations. Yet it remains unclear whether interventions would have an effect on judgement in punitive measures. There is limited literature that examines the effect of educational intervention and its immediate application on giving punishment in the education system. I purpose that future studies should explore intervention strategies tailored to specific racial identities to decrease stereotyping and disproportionate punishment of marginalized communities, and ultimately dismantle the many systems that perpetuate racism.If there were to be an intervention, we believe that it would not simply be a universal approach; instead, intervention strategies should be tailored to people’s individual identities and experiences. If effective, the potential applications of an educational intervention could decrease stereotyping and disproportionate punishment of marginalized communities, and ultimately dismantle the many systems that perpetuate racism.