The Disproportionate Overrepresentation of Minority Youth in ...

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and deprivation financially and then you are looking at where are going to
live and how are they going to live and there is probably a lack of
education and I think that those factors together are setting it up so that
there probably are a disproportionate number of minorities.
First of all, ...there is tons and tons of bias out in the community and
society that leads the African Americans to come into these types of
systems...In the juvenile system, when you place a white child or a black
child you are placing them in a group home or a residential facility that
has white staff and has a concept of molding these kids into a white family
setting, back into a white community. These black kids aren’t going to do
well in that type of setting. You talked about the sensitivity of the
multicultural training. These people in these white residential homes or
white group homes aren’t going through that type of training but yet, they
are expected to deal with these white youths and black youths that are
being placed there. Well, when you complete a group home you go home
and when you don’t complete a group home you get locked up. If you are
black and you are in these group homes and you aren’t completing them,
you are going to get locked up, you are going to get placed in detention or
you are going to go the state training school and that has tons to do with
the numbers being so out of whack...
...I think that you have to adapt some of your services to the population
that you are serving and I do not believe that some of the traditional things
we do probation wise, I don’t think that some of our black youth can
identify with that. They don’t see it as important.
...I think where the race difference comes in, and it is probably more of an
economic difference than it is race, to get out of security detention you
need to have either the economics to have a phone or one or two parents
who will stand up in court and say that they are going to control and
supervise this kid 24 hours a day and I will report any violations and that
is where the black kids come up short. They either come in and they can’t
get out because they have a single