The Disproportionate Overrepresentation of Minority Youth in ...

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parents that it needs. Thus, parents should be working together with their children and
taking more responsibility for how well or poorly they do in school.
Race Differences in General
In this section, questions were asked of decision makers regarding their views on
crime and the attitudes of blacks and other minorities. Specifically, whether or not blacks
and whites differed either in the types of crimes committed or the attitudes they displayed
were the focus of the inquiry. For the most part, blacks are believed to be more frequently
convicted of drug offenses but do not commit more or more serious crime. Also, blacks
were not necessarily seen as being more disrespectful even though their families were
less trusting of the system.
Crime
Juvenile justice decision makers were asked if they believed blacks commit
different crimes and more crime in contrast to whites. Responses to these close ended
questions and others are presented in Tables six and seven.
A large percentage of the personnel did not agree with the statement that blacks
commit different crimes than whites (75 percent strongly disagreed/disagreed) or more
crime (64 percent strongly disagreed/disagreed). Fourteen percent, however, agreed with
the latter statement.
The dominant theme from the interviews confirmed the belief that black youth do
not commit more crime and/or more serious