The Disproportionate Overrepresentation of Minority Youth in ...

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and he spoke out against me, made me out as some kind of devil, what he
wanted me to be or what he thinks all black people are, animals… He
doesn’t respect me as a person or my race. He doesn’t respect my race,
period.
This young man is an exception to the general responses from the youth. He was
the only black to feel that probation officers have any racial bias. Only seven of the 73
whites in the survey felt that probation officers were prejudiced against blacks. One white
youth said, “They treat some people some ways and some others.” And yet this was about
the harshest statement about bias in all the interviews (excluding the black youth quoted
above).
In terms of economic and age bias, it would seem that the youth perceived it to be
much worse among police officers than among probation officers. These youth believed
probation officers give everybody a fair chance. A white youth summed up the attitude of
probation officers like this:
If there’s a kid who wants to work and try, they’re really good to him, but
if there’s a kid who doesn’t care about nothing, they are going to do the
same thing. They’re just going to put him in court, send him wherever.
Respect
Clearly, the youth tended to trust and respect their probation officers. Forty—
three percent of the whites said they always trust their probation officer while only 14
percent said they could never trust their probation officer. Blacks responded a little
differently, yet most feel a certain amount of trust. Sixty—three percent said they at least
sometimes trust their probation officer while the other 37 percent said they could
absolutely never trust their officer (Tables 5, 6).