My first fact that seemed crazy to me was that in 2013 black juveniles were more than four times as likely to be committed then white juveniles. It is crazy to me because in the justice system today, as I know of it seems like you see a lot of stories on white juveniles committed crimes more often than the youth of black juveniles. A second part for me that was crazy is that Hispanic juveniles were 61 percent more likely to committed the crimes as well. Another thing that I read that I thought was crazy was the map of American Indian/ White racial disparity in commitment rates per 100,000 youth. What was crazy to me some states have 10 plus like Illinois’ for example and then some other states like California have lower numbers like 1 out a few. It crazy to me to see that some states have higher numbers all around and other states have lower. Fourth thing that I found crazy was the arrest rate, meaning that there was more person committed crimes then there was simple assaults or drug law violations. To me I would think with teenagers that there would be more people getting caught with drugs than hurting another person. Just my option but I just thought it was crazy. I also think that it is crazy to see that out of every 10,000 teenagers there are 738 black juveniles getting arrested and only 322 white juveniles getting arrested, and to see most white juveniles are getting probation more that the average black juvenile is unimaginable to think. I can’t understand how more whites get probation for the same crime the black juveniles commit, to me it sounds like the justice system needs to figure something out before the wrong people get out of jail and are on probation and commit more crimes because they know they can get away with it. Just my opinion but, some type changes need to be solved. Overall, I believe that I learned a lot of interesting things from this article. I also feel like colored people are more likely to live on the streets and not have anyone to look out after them. So, they are the ones that committed to the juvenile facilities. Unlike for white people they are more likely to be looked over and when they do something bad it’s with friends and not thought off. But somehow Hispanic youth are not looked at that much. They are 61 percent more likely than white youth to be in placement, I don’t understand that black people get looked at so bad when Hispanic youth are doing the same amount. I don’t find it fair that Indians don’t get recognized either. They are four times as likely to be committed than white people. They said in the article that white and black youth are roughly to get in fights, carry weapons, steal property, use and sell illicit substances, and commit offenses. It seems that since young black teenagers are out here bad they are mostly the target and arrested more. It’s so many ways the world view things. It’s like we all can do something bad, any color. They play so unfair sometimes, yes, I understand they don’t think about what they do when they are young. But think about it like this, compare young black kid’s homes to white homes. Sometimes that could be the reason why black youth get arrested the most. The way they are the raised sometimes with no money and sometimes barley a place to live or maybe the way their parents raised them. I’m not saying some white homes can’t be dysfunctional, I’m saying they might have more money and place to live compare to a black home. Parents do play a big role on how a kid grow up and act. If you’re not doing what you need to do as a parent then yes, your child/teenager are going to get in trouble and try new things. They aren’t mature enough so they are going to need their parents. Sometimes kids must do things to learn things. It’s all a part of life and growing up. I truly hope those rating go down and things get better. – BABYBLUE123 & SMILE123
I completely agree with the fact that the system needs to start punishing the same crime equally across the board. Just because you are white does not mean you should be able to get a lesser punishment. In the same sense just because your skin color is black you should not get "locked up". I'm sure this is not the exact way things are handled but it sure looks that way when you read an article like this and don't know much about the juvenile system. I also agree with the fact that the Hispanic culture doesn’t get looked upon as much or get categorized in with white, which is wrong. Their crime rate is still high and society still only looks at white youth and colored youth. It’s interesting seeing that most of the crime done by teenagers is person committed crimes than assaults or drug violations. Overall, I believe some changes need to be made in incarcerating juveniles. Sunshine123 & UofM123
After reading Racial Disparities in Youth Commitments and Arrests 3 things really stuck out to me. The main one being that racial disparities are growing in almost every step of the juvenile justice system. Based on research it is almost as if black youth don’t have a chance after they have been arrested. Being arrested is where it starts. Black youth are more likely to have their cases referred to juvenile court, more likely to have their cases heard and not diverted, and more likely to be committed to secure placement and less likely to have probation. If black youth were being treated the same as their white peers I don’t personally think as many black youth would be going as deep into the juvenile system. Something else that stood out to me that made sense but is not right or fair is the demographics of youth. In most states, it is believed the majority of black youth is concentrated in the cities and inner suburbs where as most white youth live in suburbs and rural areas. Therefore more colored youth are being caught. Most law enforcement are going to be patrolling the areas they know to be high crime and unfortunately that is more in the cities. If there was more patrolling and known crime in the rural areas I feel as the numbers would reflect differently. I can't say for certain that numbers would be even but if more crime was being caught and dealt with the same in the rural areas and suburbs as it was in the cities things might change. In the article it also stated that prosecutors and judges decisions have not caused the increase in commitment disparities, but they also have not mitigated them. I think the prosecutors and judges put all the faith in the officers, which they should be able to, but when there are so many crooked people and crooked cops it's really hard to be able to do that. It is disgusting to actually see the numbers and what our society is okay with. It's very sickening because a crime is a crime and should be dealt with equally across the board not differently depending on your skin color. There was an abundance of interesting statistics that stood out to me while reading this article. One being that blacks and whites were both just as likely to commit status offenses. Also, they were both just as likely to get into fights, steal, and carry weapons. However, where they differ is in their behavior. This could be centered around the fact that the majority of black youth is located in inner suburbs and cities as mentioned earlier. Being surrounded by high crime could influence how they approach speaking and dealing with officers. Both have the same opportunities to make bad decisions but how they want deal with getting caught will have the bigger affect in the long run. I do believe it is important for police to patrol areas with much higher crime to keep everyone in order. However, sometimes being raised in a bad neighborhood could cause some children to make choices they could have avoided if raised in a different area. Clearly both black and white youth are making the same poor decisions to get themselves in trouble with the law yet those of color are being targeted the most. It’s bizarre to me that 76% of all the committed juveniles had been adjudicated on a nonviolent offense. Even though that was from 2003 not much has changed because it now stands at 74%. I believe that it is important to make sure juveniles are getting proper treatment to become better for the society. However, I feel as if we should only be putting juveniles in who pose the greatest risk. Juvenile arrests did fall 34% over 10 years due to policy and practices changing over time. This is because more juveniles are likely to get punishments such as probation instead. I believe that this is a good thing because this could scare some juveniles to not want to get incarcerated. We should give them more opportunity to improve themselves instead of giving them the strictest punishments. However, this does depend on what crime was committed of course. Sunshine123 & UofM123
I totally agree, they are being unfair about who they want to punish and who they want to give a warning to. A crime is a crime which you are correct but like in previous articles and videos they make it so unfair to the point that some get life without parole. They expect black people to commit crimes and that how society is, they all think it’s cool to look at people that don’t have money or even a place to live to commit crimes. That’s the main problem they think people with no income and poor behavior are the most dangerous people when there not. They are just trying to make a living just like anybody else. No, I’m not trying to say selling drugs and killing people are good but it’s hard to get a job out here with the type of people we have now. They are so pinky in so many ways it doesn’t make any sense. Many if they would give these kids easier ways to get jobs and make real money they won’t be in the streets or many bad decisions. BABYBLUE123 & SMILE123
I completely agree that those of African descent don’t have much of a fighting chance within a system that prosecutes and harasses based off the color of a person’s skin and the stereotypes that are glued to that color. Though, I do understand the need to do the job but often the job is overdone and people are over punished by a simple glance at who they are and aren’t necessarily given a chance like though of a more favorable color, such as white. I noticed that all those graphs seemed very in favor of the white race. It’s almost like they expect a person of color to commit a crime regardless. A crime is still a crime though. Be it black or white, it’s still the same crime if both commit it, but sadly, it most likely won’t be the same punishment for both. I feel that if this was all back in 2013, we should expect to keep seeing a rise in these kinds of racial discrepancies. SomethingProfound123 & ws123
The juvenile justice system needs a complete overhaul. We can not continue to accept terrible stats being broadcast around the world that shows us having huge gaps in racial disparity among juveniles. It makes our great country look terrible and incapable of providing a fair justice process that ranks us along Mexico, North Korea and other countries that have terrible track records in their justice systems. This is not a problem that needs to be fixed in ten years, it needs to be fixed immediately. While we still have the chance to help out kids who are going down the difficult and incorrect path in life. The cycle of racial disparity in juveniles needs to be executed. We as a society can do better for our at risk kids especially those of minorities. The stats need to decrease never increase in any single state in the U.S.. If the rates do continue to increase then the federal government needs to step in and act in the best interest of the juveniles and severely punish individual states until they correct the faults. Fireboy123
Our juvenile justice system track record does not look good for a land of the free. However, as much as it needs fixed right now, I am afraid that it will take ten years and more in order to overhaul the system. The justice system in any nation is a web filled with legislature and economical issues. To overhaul the reports we have been analyzing we would have to literally overhaul our entire nation, and I think we are doing that now and we have been. I do believe we are improving overtime and within our children or their children's life time hopefully they will live in a more just and equal America. Ghost123, GymLife123
I agree that the criminal justice system preaches equality, but sometimes equality is not always shown. Some people in the criminal justice system do not see everyone as equal and as a result of this we see inequalities. This article was very surprising to me when it came to how much more likely an African American juvenile is to be committed than a white American juvenile. I agree that our criminal justice system does not pick on the African American community. Looking deeper into these arrests and the reasons for them could help us know what the real problem is...the criminal justice system or the juveniles who are committing the crimes? This is something that needs to drastically change but unfortunately, I don’t think it will. Our society is stuck in its ways and even if the justice system were to change, it will probably take years. I agree that our youth should be treated equally no matter the race because there would be less repeat offenders in this case. -PizzaLover123/zar123
After reading “Racial Disparities in Youth Commitments and Arrests”, I noticed a few things that, in a sense, slightly bugged me. One of the things that I found weird is how the rates in African Americans and Hispanics were so high. I mean, right off the bat you would notice that the amount of commitment difference between white youths and black youths is not only noticeable but deplorable as well; let alone the rates between white and Hispanic races too. It makes me have this assumption, which may just in fact be true, that a youth of color would have a higher risk of being committed than a white youth or even a youth of Indian race or Hispanic race. However, that doesn’t go to say that youths of Indian or Hispanic are any less than white because this article clearly shows graphs that demonstrate the difference between the two gaps. In most of the research that was there, Hispanic and African American were the ones with the higher numbers. Why is that? Are they saying that African Americans and Hispanic commit the most crime? I feel like they aren’t judging the white people as hard as they are judging the African Americans and the Hispanic people. It always seems as though the white youth is more likely to be less convicted than any other race. Is that fair? I can’t personally say it is. I believe that regardless of your race, if you commit a crime you should be held responsible for it. I mean, white youth commits crime just as well as any other race. Youths also should not be overly punished just because of the color of their skin. It’s sad to say, that’s not how it works. Racism is still strong within the justice system. It was back in the day and it still is today. A lot of it could be because of the way the people running the justice systems were raised and what years they were born because not everyone in the system today was born into a year of racial acceptance. It one point in the article, it was stated that “juvenile placement ought to be reserved for those who pose the greatest risk to public safety….”. I don’t think the youth is putting a risk on other people. I feel like they are more harm to themselves because they might be trying to fit in with the other people or in fact, may be trying to prove that their race is just as good as the white race. Though I don’t necessarily see it as a competition. The statement to me was an insulting statement. It was trying to make youth seem like animals or something. Trying to cage them to keeps them away from the rest of society. The reporter could have put it in different wording; to not make them seem like such animals but rather just troubled youth in need of rehabilitation or, if the crimes were severe enough, incarceration. Another thing that is strange and disappointing is how in the graph about arrest rate, the highest one was in African Americans. Why is so high? From drug possession to simple assaults African Americans have the highest numbers. Back then, one wouldn’t think that the rates would be so high in comparison to today, as an example. The rates are so high back then when it that was only in 2013. Have they gone up even more now that it is 2017 now? More than likely yes because it seems to me that it is a pattern that keeps recycling itself. Honestly though, I don’t feel like this surprised me at all. Only because, just to be perfectly honest, the crime rate in black youth will always be high. Only, because they are looked to as poor and not in school. If they are not in school than chances are, they are out in the streets committing a crime. Or at least doing something that should not be doing. Even so, if they aren’t on the streets “committing a crime” and they do happen to be in school, the system is still very overly suspicious of them just because of the color of their skin. I feel that’s why a lot of African Americans are targeted by police while driving and end up being harassed. I feel this is a one-sided world to live in when I see this information. SomethingProfound123 & ws123
It is definitely strange that the rates are so high in Hispanics and blacks, while the white juveniles are seemingly behaving as they should; however, this seems quite unlikely to me. I think that the system simply pays additional attention to the minority groups over the group of white teenagers. It doesn’t seem likely that white kids naturally behave better than the other groups of juveniles. I think if we all looked a little bit closer at what is going on, we would see those numbers start to come a little bit closer to each other. gh_blackhawks123 I to think it is crazy how skewed the statistics are. when you look at the home life of most of these kids it shows alot and gives us insight onto why the stats are the way they are. KLICK123
The everlasting changes to the U.S. Youth Commitment Disparities have been very interesting to follow. In 2003, the average African American youth was about 3.7 times more likely to be committed than that of a white youth. Then just ten years later, the rate at which African American youths being committed increased from 3.7 up to 4.3 more times as likely as white youths. That amounts to about a 15 percent increase in disparity. However, within the years of 2003 and 2013, thirty-three states had an increased commitment disparity rate of African American youths and white youths than the ten years prior. Also interesting to note, was how seventeen states either saw no changes at all or saw the disparity rate begin to decline. I also found it pretty interesting how in 2003, the Hispanic youth were sixty-one times more likely than white youth to be committed, however, ten years later the ratio of Hispanic youth to white youth being committed did not change at all. I would have thought maybe since there was an increase for the African American youth that there would also be a similar increase for Hispanic youth as well. Another fact I found to grab my eye was that in Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, and West Virginia Hispanic youth were either less likely or even just equally as likely as the white youth to be committed. Another statistic that I thought was rather intriguing was how out of every 10,000 teenagers that get arrested, about seven hundred thirty eight of them are black juveniles compared that with just three hundred twenty two for white juveniles. It was also kind of interesting how out of every one thousand juveniles adjudicated delinquent, six hundred eleven African American juveniles received probation and white juveniles received more probation with about six hundred forty eight received. It is very clear that there is quite a widespread racial and ethnic disparity featured in the juvenile justice system. This issue with racial, ethnic, and gender disparity within our juvenile justice system is alarming and points to drawbacks or faults within our criminal justice system. The beginning of this article pointed out that the starting point for juveniles being committed to secure facilities starts with an arrest. The arrest patterns appeared to have improved with white juvenile arrest rates falling by 49 percent and African American arrest patterns falling by 31 percent. While this is an improvement in the last ten years, we still see a wide gap in the ratios of racial and ethnic commitment rates. I believe this is largely due to the system we have in place and the statistical income levels of each juvenile offender. Officers may be arresting certain racial groups, statistically, because of social biases and profiling as well as income level of the offenders. To truly fix this issue we need to analyze the arrests and isolate patterns that lead to the commitment of juvenile offenders. Ten years from now I expect the ratios to change but to be swayed similar to how they are now unfortunately. As our nation's economic climate shifts through the years we will see more balanced ratios in the disparities. People with lower income are consequently more likely to become criminal offenders and possibly juvenile offenders if they start at a young age. Each racial and ethnicity group have populations living in poverty across the nation. Depending on the location, each group maintains the majority within that population. The arrests that help us analyze and improve this system are occurring in these poverty locations more frequently than more developed locations. Developing a better economic climate for people living in poverty will help disperse many of the disparities we have in our juvenile criminal system. This, hopefully, can not only lower the amount of people incarcerated but also allow for a more just and equal form of criminal justice system for all. Ghost123 and Gymlife123
I completely agree with you on how these facts are very interesting and surprising. I also believe that more African American and Hispanic youths get committed than whites are due to faults in the court systems. Even though like you have said the rates have fell in the past years for arrest of these different races, there are still big differences in these different groups. But you also have to think about where most of the cops are, in lower income poverties neighborhoods. Most of those people in those neighborhoods are of the African American and Hispanic descent. So I believe that is a reason that those races are more prone to being arrested and so on. Most of the white kids are in neighborhoods that cop activity is less active and are more likely to get away with stuff that the other kids are not as likely to get away with. Trojan65 Cavs123
I think that it is great that there is a substantial decrease in the number of juvenile delinquents going to jail. That means our society is heading in the right direction of being more lenient towards youths in the justice system. There is also two other possibilities that contribute to this decreasing number. Either our police officers suck at bringing criminals into jail booking or that the juveniles today are getting away with crimes now more than ever. So therefore this study is a pretty terrible resource because it mentions neither of these or presents any other possible reasoning. As a minority I do not like the fact that we are more likely to find ourselves behind bars than the rest of society. Being a different skin color should not differentiate what crimes you will be arrested for or what punishment you will receive. It is all about the juvenile himself and his situation/ life-experiences and troubles. I do believe that minorities are likely poorer than the rest which results in the life of crime. At the same time it is probably likely that these minority juveniles’ family structure and home life SUCKS. So how can you blame them when chances are they have been exposed to crime all their life or have had intense struggles that ninety nine percent of the population have and will never go through? I do think that the states with the highest percentage of racial disparity among juveniles need to get their stuff together and re-evaluate what in the heck is going on. They are clearly failing at what they should be doing, whether that is the police or even state policies/laws. It should be easier for the federal government to look into this disparity in states than it is for bureaucrats to launch investigations into the Chicago Police Department or police shootings. This not only is a waste of our money, but a huge waste of time, that time could be spent on rehabbing our justice system and kids that need it most. Overall our justice system needs to spend more time fixing how they determine what kids will be put behind bars and which ones will get off the hook, etc. Fireboy123 NDIrish123
This article is very eye opening for our criminal justice system because we always preach equality but yet we don't show and or do equality. This article just isn't true at the Juvenile level but also at the adult level. Somethings that surprised me with this study is that black juveniles were more than four times likely to be committed as white juveniles, I figured that the black juveniles would be more likely to be placed behind bars, but not by that big of an amount. Some factors resulting in this could be that there is just more black juveniles committing crimes then white juveniles and that could be why the numbers are so skewed in one direction. Another thing that surprised me was that nationwide Hispanic youth were 61% more likely than white youth to be in placement. That is far more surprising to me do to the fact that we have a greater white population than we have Hispanic population. My third thing that surprised me was that nationwide American Indian youth were nearly four times as likely as white youth to be committed. These things are very surprising and sad to see now yes these types of groups may be the only ones committing crimes but we should still have a closer gap than what there is now. Many people say that our justice system is unfair and all we do is pick on the African American community, that is not so true in our society today African Americans commit more crimes than white Americans do so that in tales that there would be more black people would be getting incarcerated and that isn't just at the adult level where we mainly see it but we see it is now worked it's way into the juvenile system as well. Out of every 10,000 teenagers we arrest 738 black juveniles and we arrest 322 white juveniles. To me this is a big red flag and I would like to know out of all the juveniles that were contacted how many got cut loose and how many where white and how many were black. Then out of ever 1,000 arrests 298 white juveniles were diverted away from formal court processing and 217 black juveniles were diverted away from formal court processing. Fireboy123 NDIrish123
I completely agree with you on how these facts are very interesting and surprising. I also believe that more African American and Hispanic youths get committed than whites are due to faults in the court systems. It could also be due to possibly inefficiently policing juveniles of color compared to juveniles that are white.We being the new generation of the force will have to find a way to fix this problem if we ever want to see more united communities and a drop in juvenile crime. I think Fireboy 123 and NDIrish123 make some good points. It is likely that a lot of this juvenile offenders probably come from poor family lives, situations and lower income neighborhoods and are introduce to much higher levels of adversity than the average middle class counterpart. However, to make it look like the juvenile system is intentionally targeting minorities , just because arrest numbers of certain minorities are higher, is to look at only one small speck of a much larger picture. Jeeper123, and Pack123
There were many things about this article were very surprising and also very eye-opening to me. The article itself shows many statistics and is very informative about our juvenile system and the types of juveniles in the system itself. As stated in this quote from the article, "Between 2003 and 2013 (the most recent data available), the rate of youth committed to juvenile facilities after an adjudication of delinquency fell by 47 percent.1) Every state witnessed a drop in its commitment rate, including 19 states where the commitment rates fell by more than half." It shows how states have seen drops in the crime rates of juveniles, which to me is pretty surprising as i would have thought that crime rates would be higher in juveniles just simply due to the fact that kids these love to misbehave. Another things i found interesting was that, Nationwide, African American juveniles were more than four times as likely to be committed to secure placements as were white juveniles. This to me shows up as a red flag and indicates a racial problem within the system. Perhaps we are policing the juveniles of color harsher than those that are white, whatever the case may be it is definitely not right. Something definitely needs to be done about this , especially in today's society where we already have rising tensions over certain races not being treated equally. One final thing that intrigued was that even as we move along in time more towards present day society, we can see the number the of arrests and commitments of people of color to correctional institutions is still rising. Not only are the numbers and percentages greater for those people of color but there have also been on the rise. This is very alarming that these numbers are still becoming greater today, where as they should be getting smaller. This definitely shows a disparity. This article was very surprising in how it articulated that the juvenile delinquency rate fell over 47 percent since 2003, and yet there are still problems with the system. It is also surprising, that the commitment rates of juveniles in 19 states fell by half or more. I thought at first, before reading this article, that the rate overall would have been down only ten to fifteen percent between blacks, whites, and Hispanics. This article opened my eyes and I did not realize that native Americans had it so rough too in certain states, compared to whites and Hispanics. With blacks having four times greater likelihood to be committed, compared to whites, this make me believe that the juvenile justice system might be flawed or corrupted. It also makes me wonder what in our juvenile systems, is leading to such a difference in disparity. Is there a difference in the environment in which the juveniles are raised, a difference in house hold income, previous family member commitments, a decrease in resources that promote non criminal activities ,that could be also effecting these rates? There are multiple arenas that effect a juvenile as they are growing, that could be effecting these racial difference disparities. These arenas range from family, government, educational systems, peers, role models, societal examples that influence a juveniles behavior and so on. The racial disparity rate also fluctuates greatly from state to state. For example the changes in disparities from black to white in Illinois is -16 percent compared to New Hampshire with it being at 897 percent is just insane. This leads to the question what is the difference between each states environment that either increases or decrease the disparity between races? If a lot of these questions could be answered or at least investigated into, that would be a great start at re-vamping the Juvenile Justice system across the United States as a whole. The other consideration in looking at these racial disparity numbers, is the population and racial diversity of each state. This can greatly effect the difference in numbers. I think that revamping the JJS could be part of the equation. Jeeper123, and Pack123
While reading the article a bunch of questions raised in my mind. Why is it that race is the "identifier" of what kind of person you are? Is there a reason that black juveniles are more likely than white juveniles, in the United States, to be committed? Is this a cultural problem or is this problem personal? I don't know if any of these questions are answerable. One part of the article that shocked me the most is the fact that white juvenile (compared to Black, Hispanic, and American Indian juveniles) have the least commitment rates. If Whites were the minority in the United States I could understand this but since they are the majority this information shocks me. Another part of the article that was very shocking to me was that black juveniles are 2.3 times as likely to be arrested as white youth for all juvenile offenses. This is an eye opening statement because this is not just a statement about Peoria youth, this is a statement about nationwide youth. I've heard people say "cops are racist" or " cops want all blacks on jail" but not every cop wants that, so this means that black juveniles are getting themselves in trouble. I agree that the existence of racial disparities is a disturbing feature of the juvenile justice system. It is very disturbing to find out that when it comes to juvenile delinquency, the minority is the majority. Meaning, it is sad to see that Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians ( the minority) are arrested more than Whites (the majority). I believe that these minorities are being arrested because of poverty; maybe they do not have the resources they need to survive, so they go out and steal or sell drugs to get money. This is very unfortunate because these children did not choose to live in poverty, more than likely they were born into it and they have no control over the family they are born into. Sometimes juveniles look up to other juveniles who are delinquent and they become delinquent as well. I think our minority youth need positive role models and more opportunities in our communities so they can put their energy into activities that are conducive for growth. I also was surprised to learn that juvenile arrest rates fell 34 percent from 2003 to 2013 because it seems as if kids are getting into more trouble now then ever before. I found it crazy to learn that youth of different color were far more likely to be committed rather than white youth. I think every juvenile should be treated the same and given the same dealing as any other and never understood why juveniles are treated differently from one another. It makes me wonder why black youth are 5 percent more likely to commit violent crimes rather than white youth. I found these facts to be very interesting and surprising because some of them I wouldn’t have thought to be true. After reading this article, I didn’t think the numbers would be that drastic between some of the different races of youth. The fact that black youth who are arrested and are more than likely referred to juvenile court compared to another race is crazy. Black youth are also less likely to be put on probation but instead receive a secure placement in the juvenile detention center. This seems to be a bit extreme as to why another race doesn’t receive the same sentence. Therefore, there are repeat offenders because they are treated poorly and unfair in the juvenile justice system and are pretty much just being locked up without given a second chance or rehabilitation rather than the next juvenile who committed the same crime and does not receive any incarceration time but instead gets help. This is not fair to the youth who do not get a chance to prove themselves and to allow them to give their full potential. Racial disparities are a growing concern in the juvenile justice system and I think it will only continue to get worse if our youth is not being treated equally or getting the help that they need, I don’t think there wouldn’t be as many repeat offenders. -Tp566/PizzaLover123
While reading the article a bunch of questions raised in my mind. Why is it that race is the "identifier" of what kind of person you are? Is there a reason that black juveniles are more likely than white juveniles, in the United States, to be committed? Is this a cultural problem or is this problem personal? I don't know if any of these questions are answerable. One part of the article that shocked me the most is the fact that white juvenile (compared to Black, Hispanic, and American Indian juveniles) have the least commitment rates. If Whites were the minority in the United States I could understand this but since they are the majority this information shocks me. Another part of the article that was very shocking to me was that black juveniles are 2.3 times as likely to be arrested as white youth for all juvenile offenses. This is an eye opening statement because this is not just a statement about Peoria youth, this is a statement about nationwide youth. I've heard people say "cops are racist" or " cops want all blacks on jail" but not every cop wants that, so this means that black juveniles are getting themselves in trouble. I agree that the existence of racial disparities is a disturbing feature of the juvenile justice system. It is very disturbing to find out that when it comes to juvenile delinquency, the minority is the majority. Meaning, it is sad to see that Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians ( the minority) are arrested more than Whites (the majority). I believe that these minorities are being arrested because of poverty; maybe they do not have the resources they need to survive, so they go out and steal or sell drugs to get money. This is very unfortunate because these children did not choose to live in poverty, more than likely they were born into it and they have no control over the family they are born into. Sometimes juveniles look up to other juveniles who are delinquent and they become delinquent as well. I think our minority youth need positive role models and more opportunities in our communities so they can put their energy into activities that are conducive for growth. I also was surprised to learn that juvenile arrest rates fell 34 percent from 2003 to 2013 because it seems as if kids are getting into more trouble now then ever before. I found it crazy to learn that youth of different color were far more likely to be committed rather than white youth. I think every juvenile should be treated the same and given the same dealing as any other and never understood why juveniles are treated differently from one another. It makes me wonder why black youth are 5 percent more likely to commit violent crimes rather than white youth. I found these facts to be very interesting and surprising because some of them I wouldn’t have thought to be true. After reading this article, I didn’t think the numbers would be that drastic between some of the different races of youth. The fact that black youth who are arrested and are more than likely referred to juvenile court compared to another race is crazy. Black youth are also less likely to be put on probation but instead receive a secure placement in the juvenile detention center. This seems to be a bit extreme as to why another race doesn’t receive the same sentence. Therefore, there are repeat offenders because they are treated poorly and unfair in the juvenile justice system and are pretty much just being locked up without given a second chance or rehabilitation rather than the next juvenile who committed the same crime and does not receive any incarceration time but instead gets help. This is not fair to the youth who do not get a chance to prove themselves and to allow them to give their full potential. Racial disparities are a growing concern in the juvenile justice system and I think it will only continue to get worse if our youth is not being treated equally or getting the help that they need, I don’t think there wouldn’t be as many repeat offenders. -Zar123/PizzaLover123
The first fact that sounded crazy to me was that American Indian youth were 10 times more likely to be committed than whites are. To me that is absolutely crazy because when someone thinks about juveniles no one really thinks about Native Americans being a part of that because they are such a minority group in the United States. That doesn’t seem plausible because the Native American juveniles make up such a small percentage why is there so much more biased to them than the whites. The Native Americans are located so far and between and mostly only in certain states. Also between the years of 2003 and 2013, there was a fifteen percent increase that African American juveniles would be committed than white juveniles. I believe this is because during the past ten years in the United States there have been a shift in racial discrimination. I think this is because the recent events that have happened. With Ferguson happening and all of the other top headline news events relating the African American descent it seems like people have become a little more racist and have been more open about it because of the most recent events. So, I believe that this has also influenced the court systems. It has made the biased leaning more to the white kids than the black kids. If a conflict happens between two kids being an African American and a white kid it seems like the black kid would not get as much leeway as the white kid would. What I also found crazy was that even though the Native American kids barely account for one percent of the population. They are Actually 3.7 times more likely to be committed than a white kid would be. That really makes me wonder why the Native American children are that much more likely than the whites are to be committed. Are the Native American children that more prone to getting in trouble? That is what I would like to know and I am sure many more people would also like to know why this is also. The Juvenile Justice system needs a lot of work. Over half the states in the U.S.A charge kids 12 and under as adults. To me this is something that needs to be fixed because this doesn't give them a second chance to get their life back together. Some kids may have mental health issues and may need some medication to help their issues. Over 10,000 kids in the united states are behind an adult jail or prison because of minor little crimes they have committed such as stealing an item of less than a dollar to murder. Even though punishment is necessary, this doesn't mean they can be prosecuted as an adult. The limited amount of housing in prisons and jail causes overcrowding and less room for adults. I believe this is something that needs to be changed in our juvenile justice system and it needs to be solved by not charging minors as adults. Not all kids deserve severe punishments and should be giving second chances. A lot of minors commit small little crimes such as trespassing, and stealing a bike. They even have to go to adult court, where they won’t be treated the same way an adult would because maybe they can’t get a lawyer or the fact that they are so young gives the judge an advantage to abuse they’re rights. All kids are supposed to have equal rights such as adults which to them isn’t fair. Everyone should be created equal and should have rights. To me it isn’t right to be trying kids for adult crimes. It’s not a fair thing to do for the kids and it’s something to be fixed down the road. Kids should have a fair trial in juvenile court, not adult court. It’s amazing how things are in this country with the juvenile justice system. So, in conclusion I think it should be changed and it’s something not fair to the kids. It’s simply just something that needs to be changed for the sake of America and for the sake of underaged kids committing small crimes that aren’t harmful. Trojan 65, Cavs123
It's very eye opening for me to see that there is such a difference in arrest rates between whites and the other minorities in this country. It's sad to see how much more minorities are arrested and convicted of crimes. This connects to what we have spoke of in class lecture about how cops normally don't stay around the suburban homes because all of the action is in the inner city. If I had to guess, there's going to be more crime in the inner city by the youth because maybe they have a rough life at home and are just trying to get by, while the youth in the subs are partying away doing drugs and drinking, getting away with it. It's also very eye opening to see that the African American youth are 4.3 times more likely to commit a crime than the white youth. I believe that there is some targeting involved in why the numbers are the way they are, because all of the minorities are more likely to commit crimes than white people. Personally I have more white friends that are my age that have committed more crimes than my other friends that aren't white. So I really do believe that there is major profiling of race in some parts of this country, especially the sanctuary cities like Chicago or Los Angeles. My own dad experience this as a kid just walking home from school in Pekin multiple times because he was Japanese! It's disgusting to know that this behavior still exists in our country to this day. And don't get me wrong I am pro police in all of these social media attacks on police, because I believe there are more good than bad police officers, but there are definitely some corrupt police officers in this country. -Arthur123
Yes I totally agree when we see that at the three times is the lowest arrest rate, I feel like we need to do something with our juvenile justice system. If we never change those arrest rates then later on in the future they may rise to where almost every minority is getting arrested ten times more likely than whites. Also if we never get these numbers close on the arrest rates how will minorities be able to trust police if they only think that the police are out to only arrest them. When we were discussing in class how police never seem to arrest a lot of people in high end neighborhoods or in suburban areas this is where most white people live and very few minorities. If we had equal police spread out evenly over all areas of a city or town then maybe these arrest rates would be a lot closer. Illini123
When reading this article and seeing that the commitment rate for youths of color was at least 3 times more likely than that of a white youth this has me thinking what are we actually doing with our criminal justice system. Seeing that black youths were four times more likely to be committed than white youths, mainly because of the color of their skin is ridiculous. Also seeing that hispanics are sixty one percent more likely to be committed is crazy, just because we associate the hispanics with being in gangs or selling and using drugs. Just because we do not see white youths doing drugs or selling them does not mean that they are not doing them, it just means that they have found somewhere the police will not bust them at. Another statistic that surprised me was that when white juvenile arrest rates dropped by almost fifty percent and the african american juvenile arrest rates only dropped by thirty one percent. If we want people to start trusting the criminal justice system, then we are going to need both of these rates to drop by almost the same percent or we need the number for each race arrested to be similar. One more statistic that caught me off gaurd is that in only ten years the number of african american commitments to white commitments had shown a fifteen percent increase in disparity, while seventeen states had shown either a decrease or they did not change. Reading that hispanic youths in four different states were not locked up at all and in nine different states they had the same commitment rate as white youths is something I think that we need to try and work on for every race and for every state. I feel if we lower the disparity number and make it at least a two percent difference or lower, then I feel that more people of color would be able to trust the police and tell their children that they are not the bad guys. If people can trust the police then we would not be having all these riots and race wars. Illini123
One thing that stood out to me while looking all of these statistics over was the fact that nearly four times as many African American juveniles were admitted to juvenile facilities as compared to white juveniles. In 2013 alone, nearly 300,000 African-American teens were admitted to these facilities, while not even 75,000 white teens were placed into said facilities. I don’t think that many of the black youths are represented as fairly as the white juveniles, which basically sets them up to fail right off the bat. It is a known fact that if you take a white male and a black male to court for the same crime, the black male is more likely to receive a harsher punishment than the white male, and that is where a lot of these poor statistics come into play in these young juveniles. As these teens continue to grow up, they will see and understand this unfair truth and the chances that they turn their life around will decline because of their lack of trust in the system itself. Another statistic that I found interesting is the arrest rates among white and black juveniles as well. In every category listed, African-American juveniles had higher rates of arrest than that of the white juveniles. For every 100,000 juveniles in 2013, almost 74 black teens were arrested, but only 32 white teenagers were arrested. It is highly unlikely that black juveniles are just simply horrible kids that go out and cause trouble at a rate so much higher than white kids that are going through the same life changes, desires, needs, and stresses as the black kids are. Further data that has no explanation is the Hispanic v. white rates. Only 69 white kids were committed to facilities while 111 Hispanic kids were for every 100,000. These statistics make it seem as if everyone is fooling around and causing trouble except for the white juveniles, but that is not true. The system simply pays more attention to the failures of Hispanics and African-Americans. One of the statistics that stood out to me the most was how the media has been covering the opioid crisis more than they were covering the crack epidemic because heroin crisis is affecting whites more than african americans. It also said when the media was covering the crack epidemic they were focused on the user's morality more than the underlying problem. Now they look at drug addiction as more of an illness then before which is leading to more people getting help, the problem with that is that kind of help was not offered to the cocaine users back in the 80s. Another thing that i thought was very interesting was the international look at incarceration. A nation’s rate of incarceration is the number of people incarcerated as a proportion of its total population. Internationally, there is broad variation in the degree to which nations incarcerate their citizens, with a nearly 40-fold difference between the highest and lowest rates. The incarceration rate is often interpreted as a measurement of the degree of punitiveness in a society, although it is an imperfect measurement. The one thing that i read that i thought was interesting and somewhat bias was that police officers talk more respectfully top white driver then they do minorities. In certain towns on cities if an officer has more negative experiences with a certain race more than the other his internal biases are going to be negative compared to the other race. The study was done in oakland, where they looked at a police officer's body cam and noticed him speaking more respectfully to the white drivers then he was to the minority drivers. These statistics are very interesting to read and do a great job of opening your eyes to other things in the criminal justice system. Klick123 and gh_blackhawk123
My first fact that seemed crazy to me was that in 2013 black juveniles were more than four times as likely to be committed then white juveniles. It is crazy to me because in the justice system today, as I know of it seems like you see a lot of stories on white juveniles committed crimes more often than the youth of black juveniles. A second part for me that was crazy is that Hispanic juveniles were 61 percent more likely to committed the crimes as well. Another thing that I read that I thought was crazy was the map of American Indian/ White racial disparity in commitment rates per 100,000 youth. What was crazy to me some states have 10 plus like Illinois’ for example and then some other states like California have lower numbers like 1 out a few. It crazy to me to see that some states have higher numbers all around and other states have lower. Fourth thing that I found crazy was the arrest rate, meaning that there was more person committed crimes then there was simple assaults or drug law violations. To me I would think with teenagers that there would be more people getting caught with drugs than hurting another person. Just my option but I just thought it was crazy. I also think that it is crazy to see that out of every 10,000 teenagers there are 738 black juveniles getting arrested and only 322 white juveniles getting arrested, and to see most white juveniles are getting probation more that the average black juvenile is unimaginable to think. I can’t understand how more whites get probation for the same crime the black juveniles commit, to me it sounds like the justice system needs to figure something out before the wrong people get out of jail and are on probation and commit more crimes because they know they can get away with it. Just my opinion but, some type changes need to be solved. Overall, I believe that I learned a lot of interesting things from this article. I also feel like colored people are more likely to live on the streets and not have anyone to look out after them. So, they are the ones that committed to the juvenile facilities. Unlike for white people they are more likely to be looked over and when they do something bad it’s with friends and not thought off. But somehow Hispanic youth are not looked at that much. They are 61 percent more likely than white youth to be in placement, I don’t understand that black people get looked at so bad when Hispanic youth are doing the same amount. I don’t find it fair that Indians don’t get recognized either. They are four times as likely to be committed than white people. They said in the article that white and black youth are roughly to get in fights, carry weapons, steal property, use and sell illicit substances, and commit offenses. It seems that since young black teenagers are out here bad they are mostly the target and arrested more. It’s so many ways the world view things. It’s like we all can do something bad, any color. They play so unfair sometimes, yes, I understand they don’t think about what they do when they are young. But think about it like this, compare young black kid’s homes to white homes. Sometimes that could be the reason why black youth get arrested the most. The way they are the raised sometimes with no money and sometimes barley a place to live or maybe the way their parents raised them. I’m not saying some white homes can’t be dysfunctional, I’m saying they might have more money and place to live compare to a black home. Parents do play a big role on how a kid grow up and act. If you’re not doing what you need to do as a parent then yes, your child/teenager are going to get in trouble and try new things. They aren’t mature enough so they are going to need their parents. Sometimes kids must do things to learn things. It’s all a part of life and growing up. I truly hope those rating go down and things get better. – BABYBLUE123 & SMILE123
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with the fact that the system needs to start punishing the same crime equally across the board. Just because you are white does not mean you should be able to get a lesser punishment. In the same sense just because your skin color is black you should not get "locked up". I'm sure this is not the exact way things are handled but it sure looks that way when you read an article like this and don't know much about the juvenile system. I also agree with the fact that the Hispanic culture doesn’t get looked upon as much or get categorized in with white, which is wrong. Their crime rate is still high and society still only looks at white youth and colored youth. It’s interesting seeing that most of the crime done by teenagers is person committed crimes than assaults or drug violations. Overall, I believe some changes need to be made in incarcerating juveniles. Sunshine123 & UofM123
DeleteAfter reading Racial Disparities in Youth Commitments and Arrests 3 things really stuck out to me. The main one being that racial disparities are growing in almost every step of the juvenile justice system. Based on research it is almost as if black youth don’t have a chance after they have been arrested. Being arrested is where it starts. Black youth are more likely to have their cases referred to juvenile court, more likely to have their cases heard and not diverted, and more likely to be committed to secure placement and less likely to have probation. If black youth were being treated the same as their white peers I don’t personally think as many black youth would be going as deep into the juvenile system. Something else that stood out to me that made sense but is not right or fair is the demographics of youth. In most states, it is believed the majority of black youth is concentrated in the cities and inner suburbs where as most white youth live in suburbs and rural areas. Therefore more colored youth are being caught. Most law enforcement are going to be patrolling the areas they know to be high crime and unfortunately that is more in the cities. If there was more patrolling and known crime in the rural areas I feel as the numbers would reflect differently. I can't say for certain that numbers would be even but if more crime was being caught and dealt with the same in the rural areas and suburbs as it was in the cities things might change. In the article it also stated that prosecutors and judges decisions have not caused the increase in commitment disparities, but they also have not mitigated them. I think the prosecutors and judges put all the faith in the officers, which they should be able to, but when there are so many crooked people and crooked cops it's really hard to be able to do that. It is disgusting to actually see the numbers and what our society is okay with. It's very sickening because a crime is a crime and should be dealt with equally across the board not differently depending on your skin color. There was an abundance of interesting statistics that stood out to me while reading this article. One being that blacks and whites were both just as likely to commit status offenses. Also, they were both just as likely to get into fights, steal, and carry weapons. However, where they differ is in their behavior. This could be centered around the fact that the majority of black youth is located in inner suburbs and cities as mentioned earlier. Being surrounded by high crime could influence how they approach speaking and dealing with officers. Both have the same opportunities to make bad decisions but how they want deal with getting caught will have the bigger affect in the long run. I do believe it is important for police to patrol areas with much higher crime to keep everyone in order. However, sometimes being raised in a bad neighborhood could cause some children to make choices they could have avoided if raised in a different area. Clearly both black and white youth are making the same poor decisions to get themselves in trouble with the law yet those of color are being targeted the most. It’s bizarre to me that 76% of all the committed juveniles had been adjudicated on a nonviolent offense. Even though that was from 2003 not much has changed because it now stands at 74%. I believe that it is important to make sure juveniles are getting proper treatment to become better for the society. However, I feel as if we should only be putting juveniles in who pose the greatest risk. Juvenile arrests did fall 34% over 10 years due to policy and practices changing over time. This is because more juveniles are likely to get punishments such as probation instead. I believe that this is a good thing because this could scare some juveniles to not want to get incarcerated. We should give them more opportunity to improve themselves instead of giving them the strictest punishments. However, this does depend on what crime was committed of course. Sunshine123 & UofM123
ReplyDeleteI totally agree, they are being unfair about who they want to punish and who they want to give a warning to. A crime is a crime which you are correct but like in previous articles and videos they make it so unfair to the point that some get life without parole. They expect black people to commit crimes and that how society is, they all think it’s cool to look at people that don’t have money or even a place to live to commit crimes. That’s the main problem they think people with no income and poor behavior are the most dangerous people when there not. They are just trying to make a living just like anybody else. No, I’m not trying to say selling drugs and killing people are good but it’s hard to get a job out here with the type of people we have now. They are so pinky in so many ways it doesn’t make any sense. Many if they would give these kids easier ways to get jobs and make real money they won’t be in the streets or many bad decisions. BABYBLUE123 & SMILE123
DeleteI completely agree that those of African descent don’t have much of a fighting chance within a system that prosecutes and harasses based off the color of a person’s skin and the stereotypes that are glued to that color. Though, I do understand the need to do the job but often the job is overdone and people are over punished by a simple glance at who they are and aren’t necessarily given a chance like though of a more favorable color, such as white. I noticed that all those graphs seemed very in favor of the white race. It’s almost like they expect a person of color to commit a crime regardless. A crime is still a crime though. Be it black or white, it’s still the same crime if both commit it, but sadly, it most likely won’t be the same punishment for both. I feel that if this was all back in 2013, we should expect to keep seeing a rise in these kinds of racial discrepancies. SomethingProfound123 & ws123
DeleteThe juvenile justice system needs a complete overhaul. We can not continue to accept terrible stats being broadcast around the world that shows us having huge gaps in racial disparity among juveniles. It makes our great country look terrible and incapable of providing a fair justice process that ranks us along Mexico, North Korea and other countries that have terrible track records in their justice systems. This is not a problem that needs to be fixed in ten years, it needs to be fixed immediately. While we still have the chance to help out kids who are going down the difficult and incorrect path in life. The cycle of racial disparity in juveniles needs to be executed. We as a society can do better for our at risk kids especially those of minorities. The stats need to decrease never increase in any single state in the U.S.. If the rates do continue to increase then the federal government needs to step in and act in the best interest of the juveniles and severely punish individual states until they correct the faults. Fireboy123
ReplyDeleteOur juvenile justice system track record does not look good for a land of the free. However, as much as it needs fixed right now, I am afraid that it will take ten years and more in order to overhaul the system. The justice system in any nation is a web filled with legislature and economical issues. To overhaul the reports we have been analyzing we would have to literally overhaul our entire nation, and I think we are doing that now and we have been. I do believe we are improving overtime and within our children or their children's life time hopefully they will live in a more just and equal America. Ghost123, GymLife123
DeleteI agree that the criminal justice system preaches equality, but sometimes equality is not always shown. Some people in the criminal justice system do not see everyone as equal and as a result of this we see inequalities. This article was very surprising to me when it came to how much more likely an African American juvenile is to be committed than a white American juvenile. I agree that our criminal justice system does not pick on the African American community. Looking deeper into these arrests and the reasons for them could help us know what the real problem is...the criminal justice system or the juveniles who are committing the crimes? This is something that needs to drastically change but unfortunately, I don’t think it will. Our society is stuck in its ways and even if the justice system were to change, it will probably take years. I agree that our youth should be treated equally no matter the race because there would be less repeat offenders in this case.
Delete-PizzaLover123/zar123
After reading “Racial Disparities in Youth Commitments and Arrests”, I noticed a few things that, in a sense, slightly bugged me. One of the things that I found weird is how the rates in African Americans and Hispanics were so high. I mean, right off the bat you would notice that the amount of commitment difference between white youths and black youths is not only noticeable but deplorable as well; let alone the rates between white and Hispanic races too. It makes me have this assumption, which may just in fact be true, that a youth of color would have a higher risk of being committed than a white youth or even a youth of Indian race or Hispanic race. However, that doesn’t go to say that youths of Indian or Hispanic are any less than white because this article clearly shows graphs that demonstrate the difference between the two gaps. In most of the research that was there, Hispanic and African American were the ones with the higher numbers. Why is that? Are they saying that African Americans and Hispanic commit the most crime? I feel like they aren’t judging the white people as hard as they are judging the African Americans and the Hispanic people. It always seems as though the white youth is more likely to be less convicted than any other race. Is that fair? I can’t personally say it is. I believe that regardless of your race, if you commit a crime you should be held responsible for it. I mean, white youth commits crime just as well as any other race. Youths also should not be overly punished just because of the color of their skin. It’s sad to say, that’s not how it works. Racism is still strong within the justice system. It was back in the day and it still is today. A lot of it could be because of the way the people running the justice systems were raised and what years they were born because not everyone in the system today was born into a year of racial acceptance.
ReplyDeleteIt one point in the article, it was stated that “juvenile placement ought to be reserved for those who pose the greatest risk to public safety….”. I don’t think the youth is putting a risk on other people. I feel like they are more harm to themselves because they might be trying to fit in with the other people or in fact, may be trying to prove that their race is just as good as the white race. Though I don’t necessarily see it as a competition. The statement to me was an insulting statement. It was trying to make youth seem like animals or something. Trying to cage them to keeps them away from the rest of society. The reporter could have put it in different wording; to not make them seem like such animals but rather just troubled youth in need of rehabilitation or, if the crimes were severe enough, incarceration. Another thing that is strange and disappointing is how in the graph about arrest rate, the highest one was in African Americans. Why is so high? From drug possession to simple assaults African Americans have the highest numbers. Back then, one wouldn’t think that the rates would be so high in comparison to today, as an example. The rates are so high back then when it that was only in 2013. Have they gone up even more now that it is 2017 now? More than likely yes because it seems to me that it is a pattern that keeps recycling itself. Honestly though, I don’t feel like this surprised me at all. Only because, just to be perfectly honest, the crime rate in black youth will always be high. Only, because they are looked to as poor and not in school. If they are not in school than chances are, they are out in the streets committing a crime. Or at least doing something that should not be doing. Even so, if they aren’t on the streets “committing a crime” and they do happen to be in school, the system is still very overly suspicious of them just because of the color of their skin. I feel that’s why a lot of African Americans are targeted by police while driving and end up being harassed. I feel this is a one-sided world to live in when I see this information. SomethingProfound123 & ws123
It is definitely strange that the rates are so high in Hispanics and blacks, while the white juveniles are seemingly behaving as they should; however, this seems quite unlikely to me. I think that the system simply pays additional attention to the minority groups over the group of white teenagers. It doesn’t seem likely that white kids naturally behave better than the other groups of juveniles. I think if we all looked a little bit closer at what is going on, we would see those numbers start to come a little bit closer to each other. gh_blackhawks123
DeleteI to think it is crazy how skewed the statistics are. when you look at the home life of most of these kids it shows alot and gives us insight onto why the stats are the way they are.
KLICK123
The everlasting changes to the U.S. Youth Commitment Disparities have been very interesting to follow. In 2003, the average African American youth was about 3.7 times more likely to be committed than that of a white youth. Then just ten years later, the rate at which African American youths being committed increased from 3.7 up to 4.3 more times as likely as white youths. That amounts to about a 15 percent increase in disparity. However, within the years of 2003 and 2013, thirty-three states had an increased commitment disparity rate of African American youths and white youths than the ten years prior. Also interesting to note, was how seventeen states either saw no changes at all or saw the disparity rate begin to decline. I also found it pretty interesting how in 2003, the Hispanic youth were sixty-one times more likely than white youth to be committed, however, ten years later the ratio of Hispanic youth to white youth being committed did not change at all. I would have thought maybe since there was an increase for the African American youth that there would also be a similar increase for Hispanic youth as well. Another fact I found to grab my eye was that in Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, and West Virginia Hispanic youth were either less likely or even just equally as likely as the white youth to be committed. Another statistic that I thought was rather intriguing was how out of every 10,000 teenagers that get arrested, about seven hundred thirty eight of them are black juveniles compared that with just three hundred twenty two for white juveniles. It was also kind of interesting how out of every one thousand juveniles adjudicated delinquent, six hundred eleven African American juveniles received probation and white juveniles received more probation with about six hundred forty eight received. It is very clear that there is quite a widespread racial and ethnic disparity featured in the juvenile justice system.
ReplyDeleteThis issue with racial, ethnic, and gender disparity within our juvenile justice system is alarming and points to drawbacks or faults within our criminal justice system. The beginning of this article pointed out that the starting point for juveniles being committed to secure facilities starts with an arrest. The arrest patterns appeared to have improved with white juvenile arrest rates falling by 49 percent and African American arrest patterns falling by 31 percent. While this is an improvement in the last ten years, we still see a wide gap in the ratios of racial and ethnic commitment rates. I believe this is largely due to the system we have in place and the statistical income levels of each juvenile offender. Officers may be arresting certain racial groups, statistically, because of social biases and profiling as well as income level of the offenders. To truly fix this issue we need to analyze the arrests and isolate patterns that lead to the commitment of juvenile offenders. Ten years from now I expect the ratios to change but to be swayed similar to how they are now unfortunately. As our nation's economic climate shifts through the years we will see more balanced ratios in the disparities. People with lower income are consequently more likely to become criminal offenders and possibly juvenile offenders if they start at a young age. Each racial and ethnicity group have populations living in poverty across the nation. Depending on the location, each group maintains the majority within that population. The arrests that help us analyze and improve this system are occurring in these poverty locations more frequently than more developed locations. Developing a better economic climate for people living in poverty will help disperse many of the disparities we have in our juvenile criminal system. This, hopefully, can not only lower the amount of people incarcerated but also allow for a more just and equal form of criminal justice system for all. Ghost123 and Gymlife123
I completely agree with you on how these facts are very interesting and surprising. I also believe that more African American and Hispanic youths get committed than whites are due to faults in the court systems. Even though like you have said the rates have fell in the past years for arrest of these different races, there are still big differences in these different groups. But you also have to think about where most of the cops are, in lower income poverties neighborhoods. Most of those people in those neighborhoods are of the African American and Hispanic descent. So I believe that is a reason that those races are more prone to being arrested and so on. Most of the white kids are in neighborhoods that cop activity is less active and are more likely to get away with stuff that the other kids are not as likely to get away with. Trojan65 Cavs123
DeleteI think that it is great that there is a substantial decrease in the number of juvenile delinquents going to jail. That means our society is heading in the right direction of being more lenient towards youths in the justice system. There is also two other possibilities that contribute to this decreasing number. Either our police officers suck at bringing criminals into jail booking or that the juveniles today are getting away with crimes now more than ever. So therefore this study is a pretty terrible resource because it mentions neither of these or presents any other possible reasoning. As a minority I do not like the fact that we are more likely to find ourselves behind bars than the rest of society. Being a different skin color should not differentiate what crimes you will be arrested for or what punishment you will receive. It is all about the juvenile himself and his situation/ life-experiences and troubles. I do believe that minorities are likely poorer than the rest which results in the life of crime. At the same time it is probably likely that these minority juveniles’ family structure and home life SUCKS. So how can you blame them when chances are they have been exposed to crime all their life or have had intense struggles that ninety nine percent of the population have and will never go through? I do think that the states with the highest percentage of racial disparity among juveniles need to get their stuff together and re-evaluate what in the heck is going on. They are clearly failing at what they should be doing, whether that is the police or even state policies/laws. It should be easier for the federal government to look into this disparity in states than it is for bureaucrats to launch investigations into the Chicago Police Department or police shootings. This not only is a waste of our money, but a huge waste of time, that time could be spent on rehabbing our justice system and kids that need it most. Overall our justice system needs to spend more time fixing how they determine what kids will be put behind bars and which ones will get off the hook, etc. Fireboy123 NDIrish123
ReplyDeleteThis article is very eye opening for our criminal justice system because we always preach equality but yet we don't show and or do equality. This article just isn't true at the Juvenile level but also at the adult level. Somethings that surprised me with this study is that black juveniles were more than four times likely to be committed as white juveniles, I figured that the black juveniles would be more likely to be placed behind bars, but not by that big of an amount. Some factors resulting in this could be that there is just more black juveniles committing crimes then white juveniles and that could be why the numbers are so skewed in one direction. Another thing that surprised me was that nationwide Hispanic youth were 61% more likely than white youth to be in placement. That is far more surprising to me do to the fact that we have a greater white population than we have Hispanic population. My third thing that surprised me was that nationwide American Indian youth were nearly four times as likely as white youth to be committed. These things are very surprising and sad to see now yes these types of groups may be the only ones committing crimes but we should still have a closer gap than what there is now. Many people say that our justice system is unfair and all we do is pick on the African American community, that is not so true in our society today African Americans commit more crimes than white Americans do so that in tales that there would be more black people would be getting incarcerated and that isn't just at the adult level where we mainly see it but we see it is now worked it's way into the juvenile system as well. Out of every 10,000 teenagers we arrest 738 black juveniles and we arrest 322 white juveniles. To me this is a big red flag and I would like to know out of all the juveniles that were contacted how many got cut loose and how many where white and how many were black. Then out of ever 1,000 arrests 298 white juveniles were diverted away from formal court processing and 217 black juveniles were diverted away from formal court processing. Fireboy123 NDIrish123
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you on how these facts are very interesting and surprising. I also believe that more African American and Hispanic youths get committed than whites are due to faults in the court systems. It could also be due to possibly inefficiently policing juveniles of color compared to juveniles that are white.We being the new generation of the force will have to find a way to fix this problem if we ever want to see more united communities and a drop in juvenile crime.
DeleteI think Fireboy 123 and NDIrish123 make some good points. It is likely that a lot of this juvenile offenders probably come from poor family lives, situations and lower income neighborhoods and are introduce to much higher levels of adversity than the average middle class counterpart. However, to make it look like the juvenile system is intentionally targeting minorities , just because arrest numbers of certain minorities are higher, is to look at only one small speck of a much larger picture. Jeeper123, and Pack123
There were many things about this article were very surprising and also very eye-opening to me. The article itself shows many statistics and is very informative about our juvenile system and the types of juveniles in the system itself. As stated in this quote from the article, "Between 2003 and 2013 (the most recent data available), the rate of youth committed to juvenile facilities after an adjudication of delinquency fell by 47 percent.1) Every state witnessed a drop in its commitment rate, including 19 states where the commitment rates fell by more than half." It shows how states have seen drops in the crime rates of juveniles, which to me is pretty surprising as i would have thought that crime rates would be higher in juveniles just simply due to the fact that kids these love to misbehave. Another things i found interesting was that, Nationwide, African American juveniles were more than four times as likely to be committed to secure placements as were white juveniles. This to me shows up as a red flag and indicates a racial problem within the system. Perhaps we are policing the juveniles of color harsher than those that are white, whatever the case may be it is definitely not right. Something definitely needs to be done about this , especially in today's society where we already have rising tensions over certain races not being treated equally. One final thing that intrigued was that even as we move along in time more towards present day society, we can see the number the of arrests and commitments of people of color to correctional institutions is still rising. Not only are the numbers and percentages greater for those people of color but there have also been on the rise. This is very alarming that these numbers are still becoming greater today, where as they should be getting smaller. This definitely shows a disparity.
ReplyDeleteThis article was very surprising in how it articulated that the juvenile delinquency rate fell over 47 percent since 2003, and yet there are still problems with the system. It is also surprising, that the commitment rates of juveniles in 19 states fell by half or more. I thought at first, before reading this article, that the rate overall would have been down only ten to fifteen percent between blacks, whites, and Hispanics. This article opened my eyes and I did not realize that native Americans had it so rough too in certain states, compared to whites and Hispanics. With blacks having four times greater likelihood to be committed, compared to whites, this make me believe that the juvenile justice system might be flawed or corrupted. It also makes me wonder what in our juvenile systems, is leading to such a difference in disparity. Is there a difference in the environment in which the juveniles are raised, a difference in house hold income, previous family member commitments, a decrease in resources that promote non criminal activities ,that could be also effecting these rates? There are multiple arenas that effect a juvenile as they are growing, that could be effecting these racial difference disparities. These arenas range from family, government, educational systems, peers, role models, societal examples that influence a juveniles behavior and so on. The racial disparity rate also fluctuates greatly from state to state. For example the changes in disparities from black to white in Illinois is -16 percent compared to New Hampshire with it being at 897 percent is just insane. This leads to the question what is the difference between each states environment that either increases or decrease the disparity between races? If a lot of these questions could be answered or at least investigated into, that would be a great start at re-vamping the Juvenile Justice system across the United States as a whole. The other consideration in looking at these racial disparity numbers, is the population and racial diversity of each state. This can greatly effect the difference in numbers. I think that revamping the JJS could be part of the equation. Jeeper123, and Pack123
While reading the article a bunch of questions raised in my mind. Why is it that race is the "identifier" of what kind of person you are? Is there a reason that black juveniles are more likely than white juveniles, in the United States, to be committed? Is this a cultural problem or is this problem personal? I don't know if any of these questions are answerable. One part of the article that shocked me the most is the fact that white juvenile (compared to Black, Hispanic, and American Indian juveniles) have the least commitment rates. If Whites were the minority in the United States I could understand this but since they are the majority this information shocks me. Another part of the article that was very shocking to me was that black juveniles are 2.3 times as likely to be arrested as white youth for all juvenile offenses. This is an eye opening statement because this is not just a statement about Peoria youth, this is a statement about nationwide youth. I've heard people say "cops are racist" or " cops want all blacks on jail" but not every cop wants that, so this means that black juveniles are getting themselves in trouble. I agree that the existence of racial disparities is a disturbing feature of the juvenile justice system. It is very disturbing to find out that when it comes to juvenile delinquency, the minority is the majority. Meaning, it is sad to see that Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians ( the minority) are arrested more than Whites (the majority). I believe that these minorities are being arrested because of poverty; maybe they do not have the resources they need to survive, so they go out and steal or sell drugs to get money. This is very unfortunate because these children did not choose to live in poverty, more than likely they were born into it and they have no control over the family they are born into. Sometimes juveniles look up to other juveniles who are delinquent and they become delinquent as well. I think our minority youth need positive role models and more opportunities in our communities so they can put their energy into activities that are conducive for growth. I also was surprised to learn that juvenile arrest rates fell 34 percent from 2003 to 2013 because it seems as if kids are getting into more trouble now then ever before. I found it crazy to learn that youth of different color were far more likely to be committed rather than white youth. I think every juvenile should be treated the same and given the same dealing as any other and never understood why juveniles are treated differently from one another. It makes me wonder why black youth are 5 percent more likely to commit violent crimes rather than white youth. I found these facts to be very interesting and surprising because some of them I wouldn’t have thought to be true. After reading this article, I didn’t think the numbers would be that drastic between some of the different races of youth. The fact that black youth who are arrested and are more than likely referred to juvenile court compared to another race is crazy. Black youth are also less likely to be put on probation but instead receive a secure placement in the juvenile detention center. This seems to be a bit extreme as to why another race doesn’t receive the same sentence. Therefore, there are repeat offenders because they are treated poorly and unfair in the juvenile justice system and are pretty much just being locked up without given a second chance or rehabilitation rather than the next juvenile who committed the same crime and does not receive any incarceration time but instead gets help. This is not fair to the youth who do not get a chance to prove themselves and to allow them to give their full potential. Racial disparities are a growing concern in the juvenile justice system and I think it will only continue to get worse if our youth is not being treated equally or getting the help that they need, I don’t think there wouldn’t be as many repeat offenders.
ReplyDelete-Tp566/PizzaLover123
While reading the article a bunch of questions raised in my mind. Why is it that race is the "identifier" of what kind of person you are? Is there a reason that black juveniles are more likely than white juveniles, in the United States, to be committed? Is this a cultural problem or is this problem personal? I don't know if any of these questions are answerable. One part of the article that shocked me the most is the fact that white juvenile (compared to Black, Hispanic, and American Indian juveniles) have the least commitment rates. If Whites were the minority in the United States I could understand this but since they are the majority this information shocks me. Another part of the article that was very shocking to me was that black juveniles are 2.3 times as likely to be arrested as white youth for all juvenile offenses. This is an eye opening statement because this is not just a statement about Peoria youth, this is a statement about nationwide youth. I've heard people say "cops are racist" or " cops want all blacks on jail" but not every cop wants that, so this means that black juveniles are getting themselves in trouble. I agree that the existence of racial disparities is a disturbing feature of the juvenile justice system. It is very disturbing to find out that when it comes to juvenile delinquency, the minority is the majority. Meaning, it is sad to see that Blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians ( the minority) are arrested more than Whites (the majority). I believe that these minorities are being arrested because of poverty; maybe they do not have the resources they need to survive, so they go out and steal or sell drugs to get money. This is very unfortunate because these children did not choose to live in poverty, more than likely they were born into it and they have no control over the family they are born into. Sometimes juveniles look up to other juveniles who are delinquent and they become delinquent as well. I think our minority youth need positive role models and more opportunities in our communities so they can put their energy into activities that are conducive for growth. I also was surprised to learn that juvenile arrest rates fell 34 percent from 2003 to 2013 because it seems as if kids are getting into more trouble now then ever before. I found it crazy to learn that youth of different color were far more likely to be committed rather than white youth. I think every juvenile should be treated the same and given the same dealing as any other and never understood why juveniles are treated differently from one another. It makes me wonder why black youth are 5 percent more likely to commit violent crimes rather than white youth. I found these facts to be very interesting and surprising because some of them I wouldn’t have thought to be true. After reading this article, I didn’t think the numbers would be that drastic between some of the different races of youth. The fact that black youth who are arrested and are more than likely referred to juvenile court compared to another race is crazy. Black youth are also less likely to be put on probation but instead receive a secure placement in the juvenile detention center. This seems to be a bit extreme as to why another race doesn’t receive the same sentence. Therefore, there are repeat offenders because they are treated poorly and unfair in the juvenile justice system and are pretty much just being locked up without given a second chance or rehabilitation rather than the next juvenile who committed the same crime and does not receive any incarceration time but instead gets help. This is not fair to the youth who do not get a chance to prove themselves and to allow them to give their full potential. Racial disparities are a growing concern in the juvenile justice system and I think it will only continue to get worse if our youth is not being treated equally or getting the help that they need, I don’t think there wouldn’t be as many repeat offenders.
ReplyDelete-Zar123/PizzaLover123
The first fact that sounded crazy to me was that American Indian youth were 10 times more likely to be committed than whites are. To me that is absolutely crazy because when someone thinks about juveniles no one really thinks about Native Americans being a part of that because they are such a minority group in the United States. That doesn’t seem plausible because the Native American juveniles make up such a small percentage why is there so much more biased to them than the whites. The Native Americans are located so far and between and mostly only in certain states. Also between the years of 2003 and 2013, there was a fifteen percent increase that African American juveniles would be committed than white juveniles. I believe this is because during the past ten years in the United States there have been a shift in racial discrimination. I think this is because the recent events that have happened. With Ferguson happening and all of the other top headline news events relating the African American descent it seems like people have become a little more racist and have been more open about it because of the most recent events. So, I believe that this has also influenced the court systems. It has made the biased leaning more to the white kids than the black kids. If a conflict happens between two kids being an African American and a white kid it seems like the black kid would not get as much leeway as the white kid would. What I also found crazy was that even though the Native American kids barely account for one percent of the population. They are Actually 3.7 times more likely to be committed than a white kid would be. That really makes me wonder why the Native American children are that much more likely than the whites are to be committed. Are the Native American children that more prone to getting in trouble? That is what I would like to know and I am sure many more people would also like to know why this is also. The Juvenile Justice system needs a lot of work. Over half the states in the U.S.A charge kids 12 and under as adults. To me this is something that needs to be fixed because this doesn't give them a second chance to get their life back together. Some kids may have mental health issues and may need some medication to help their issues. Over 10,000 kids in the united states are behind an adult jail or prison because of minor little crimes they have committed such as stealing an item of less than a dollar to murder. Even though punishment is necessary, this doesn't mean they can be prosecuted as an adult. The limited amount of housing in prisons and jail causes overcrowding and less room for adults. I believe this is something that needs to be changed in our juvenile justice system and it needs to be solved by not charging minors as adults. Not all kids deserve severe punishments and should be giving second chances. A lot of minors commit small little crimes such as trespassing, and stealing a bike. They even have to go to adult court, where they won’t be treated the same way an adult would because maybe they can’t get a lawyer or the fact that they are so young gives the judge an advantage to abuse they’re rights. All kids are supposed to have equal rights such as adults which to them isn’t fair. Everyone should be created equal and should have rights. To me it isn’t right to be trying kids for adult crimes. It’s not a fair thing to do for the kids and it’s something to be fixed down the road. Kids should have a fair trial in juvenile court, not adult court. It’s amazing how things are in this country with the juvenile justice system. So, in conclusion I think it should be changed and it’s something not fair to the kids. It’s simply just something that needs to be changed for the sake of America and for the sake of underaged kids committing small crimes that aren’t harmful. Trojan 65, Cavs123
ReplyDeleteIt's very eye opening for me to see that there is such a difference in arrest rates between whites and the other minorities in this country. It's sad to see how much more minorities are arrested and convicted of crimes. This connects to what we have spoke of in class lecture about how cops normally don't stay around the suburban homes because all of the action is in the inner city. If I had to guess, there's going to be more crime in the inner city by the youth because maybe they have a rough life at home and are just trying to get by, while the youth in the subs are partying away doing drugs and drinking, getting away with it. It's also very eye opening to see that the African American youth are 4.3 times more likely to commit a crime than the white youth. I believe that there is some targeting involved in why the numbers are the way they are, because all of the minorities are more likely to commit crimes than white people. Personally I have more white friends that are my age that have committed more crimes than my other friends that aren't white. So I really do believe that there is major profiling of race in some parts of this country, especially the sanctuary cities like Chicago or Los Angeles. My own dad experience this as a kid just walking home from school in Pekin multiple times because he was Japanese! It's disgusting to know that this behavior still exists in our country to this day. And don't get me wrong I am pro police in all of these social media attacks on police, because I believe there are more good than bad police officers, but there are definitely some corrupt police officers in this country. -Arthur123
ReplyDeleteYes I totally agree when we see that at the three times is the lowest arrest rate, I feel like we need to do something with our juvenile justice system. If we never change those arrest rates then later on in the future they may rise to where almost every minority is getting arrested ten times more likely than whites. Also if we never get these numbers close on the arrest rates how will minorities be able to trust police if they only think that the police are out to only arrest them. When we were discussing in class how police never seem to arrest a lot of people in high end neighborhoods or in suburban areas this is where most white people live and very few minorities. If we had equal police spread out evenly over all areas of a city or town then maybe these arrest rates would be a lot closer. Illini123
DeleteWhen reading this article and seeing that the commitment rate for youths of color was at least 3 times more likely than that of a white youth this has me thinking what are we actually doing with our criminal justice system. Seeing that black youths were four times more likely to be committed than white youths, mainly because of the color of their skin is ridiculous. Also seeing that hispanics are sixty one percent more likely to be committed is crazy, just because we associate the hispanics with being in gangs or selling and using drugs. Just because we do not see white youths doing drugs or selling them does not mean that they are not doing them, it just means that they have found somewhere the police will not bust them at. Another statistic that surprised me was that when white juvenile arrest rates dropped by almost fifty percent and the african american juvenile arrest rates only dropped by thirty one percent. If we want people to start trusting the criminal justice system, then we are going to need both of these rates to drop by almost the same percent or we need the number for each race arrested to be similar. One more statistic that caught me off gaurd is that in only ten years the number of african american commitments to white commitments had shown a fifteen percent increase in disparity, while seventeen states had shown either a decrease or they did not change. Reading that hispanic youths in four different states were not locked up at all and in nine different states they had the same commitment rate as white youths is something I think that we need to try and work on for every race and for every state. I feel if we lower the disparity number and make it at least a two percent difference or lower, then I feel that more people of color would be able to trust the police and tell their children that they are not the bad guys. If people can trust the police then we would not be having all these riots and race wars. Illini123
ReplyDeleteOne thing that stood out to me while looking all of these statistics over was the fact that nearly four times as many African American juveniles were admitted to juvenile facilities as compared to white juveniles. In 2013 alone, nearly 300,000 African-American teens were admitted to these facilities, while not even 75,000 white teens were placed into said facilities. I don’t think that many of the black youths are represented as fairly as the white juveniles, which basically sets them up to fail right off the bat. It is a known fact that if you take a white male and a black male to court for the same crime, the black male is more likely to receive a harsher punishment than the white male, and that is where a lot of these poor statistics come into play in these young juveniles. As these teens continue to grow up, they will see and understand this unfair truth and the chances that they turn their life around will decline because of their lack of trust in the system itself. Another statistic that I found interesting is the arrest rates among white and black juveniles as well. In every category listed, African-American juveniles had higher rates of arrest than that of the white juveniles. For every 100,000 juveniles in 2013, almost 74 black teens were arrested, but only 32 white teenagers were arrested. It is highly unlikely that black juveniles are just simply horrible kids that go out and cause trouble at a rate so much higher than white kids that are going through the same life changes, desires, needs, and stresses as the black kids are. Further data that has no explanation is the Hispanic v. white rates. Only 69 white kids were committed to facilities while 111 Hispanic kids were for every 100,000. These statistics make it seem as if everyone is fooling around and causing trouble except for the white juveniles, but that is not true. The system simply pays more attention to the failures of Hispanics and African-Americans. One of the statistics that stood out to me the most was how the media has been covering the opioid crisis more than they were covering the crack epidemic because heroin crisis is affecting whites more than african americans. It also said when the media was covering the crack epidemic they were focused on the user's morality more than the underlying problem. Now they look at drug addiction as more of an illness then before which is leading to more people getting help, the problem with that is that kind of help was not offered to the cocaine users back in the 80s. Another thing that i thought was very interesting was the international look at incarceration. A nation’s rate of incarceration is the number of people incarcerated as a proportion of its total population. Internationally, there is broad variation in the degree to which nations incarcerate their citizens, with a nearly 40-fold difference between the highest and lowest rates. The incarceration rate is often interpreted as a measurement of the degree of punitiveness in a society, although it is an imperfect measurement. The one thing that i read that i thought was interesting and somewhat bias was that police officers talk more respectfully top white driver then they do minorities. In certain towns on cities if an officer has more negative experiences with a certain race more than the other his internal biases are going to be negative compared to the other race. The study was done in oakland, where they looked at a police officer's body cam and noticed him speaking more respectfully to the white drivers then he was to the minority drivers. These statistics are very interesting to read and do a great job of opening your eyes to other things in the criminal justice system.
ReplyDeleteKlick123 and gh_blackhawk123