The Disproportionate Overrepresentation of Minority Youth in ...

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The problem is availability. There’s one girl’s group home in Des Moines.
We don’t have the facilities to work with females.
A few of the officers also noted that they did not believe females commit as
serious crimes as those committed by males.
It comes back to the ‘my little girl’ attitude. A lot of society doesn’t
believe that girls are necessarily as bad as boys. I think that you would
find that more girls are starting to be placed now. But, again, we don’t
have enough placements for girls and that makes it a real tough problem. It
is very difficult to place a girl because there are more facilities that are
arranged for boys.
Views of the Study
Although decision makers in Polk county agreed with almost all of the findings
and found nothing very surprising, they were reluctant to participate in this phase of the
study. Individual staff members either refused to participate, were reluctant to provide
concrete answers and/or refer youth for the interviews. Some officers objected to the
questions on religion and the inability to respond to the closed ended questions. Concern
was also expressed regarding the interpretation of the interviews and the presentation of
the results.
Suggestions for Change
Juvenile court officers were asked about programs that could reduce the
disproportionate overrepresentation of minorities in secure facilities. Many of the
decision makers felt that there should be more than just two minority officers to deal with