The Disproportionate Overrepresentation of Minority Youth in ...

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(47 percent answered most of the time, 41 percent answered sometimes).
Although most of the decision makers believed blacks may be distrustful of the system,
they did not see youth as more likely to deny guilt or cooperate than white youth. Thirtyfive
percent agreed (sometimes) with the statement, while 65 percent responded with
almost never to never. In fact, decision makers suggest that black youth may be more
cooperative than white youth.
No, that isn’t necessarily true because some of the black kids that I work
with appear to have more respect than the white kids. People bring that up
from time to time and I get angry at their prejudice because I have been
treated far worse by some white people in this job than I have by blacks.
Well, I have never had a black youth be less cooperative than a white kid,
never. I have never had a black youth threaten me in any way or refuse to
do anything in any way. But, I sure have had white kids do that.
The finding that black youth are as willing or more so to cooperate as white youth is
somewhat surprising, given that as a whole most decision makers felt that blacks are
more distrustful of the system than whites. There are some decision makers, however,
who felt that it may be a toss up.
I don’t know, that is kind of a toss up. I see it on both sides. It has more to
do with the kid than his ethnic background. On some things I see black
kids who as they come into the office may feel that they have been singled
out because of their race and the circumstances of the incident and we deal
with some families that think we pick on them on a regular basis just
because they are black. There are some whole families out there who