The Disproportionate Overrepresentation of Minority Youth in ...

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factors are also believed to be important, including a lack of parental supervision and a
lack of parental discipline.
Each of these sentiments is evident when reading the interviews conducted with
decision makers. In particular, the perceived changing behavior of youth to the lack of
family initiative to the demands placed on the court by the state government stand out.
Many of the personnel believe youth entering the system are younger, committing
more serious crime, and evidence multiple problems. The responses to the question,
“Does your view of the job differ now from when you first became a probation officer”,
illustrate these beliefs.
Sure, one is that in the 12 years that I have been a probation officer, I think
that our job has become more difficult. I think we really are working with
more disturbed kids coming into the system, kids that are just more
difficult in a lot of ways to deal with, not just from the criminal end,
substance abuse end, poor school performance, so it very much multiproblematic
kids that are coming in. We always had them before, but I
think there are more numbers and I think they are coming at a younger age
that requires more significant intervention.
There are kids who came into the system who kind of wander in for
various reasons because they make bad judgment, wrong place, wrong
time, impulsive behavior and that group of kids is always there. You
always have a group of kids that for various reasons will come through the
system and sometimes all they need is the system responding to them
appropriately and then sending them on their way, kind of giving them a
helping hand. That group of kids, I don’t think they have changed all that
much. They have changed in some ways because I think today’s kids
require more active involvement. I used to think that you could just sit
down and talk to them and they would