What does the research tell us about the relationship between juvenile delinquency and race?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

• There are approximately 41 million white and 9 million African American youths ages 5 to 17, a ratio of about five to one.
• Yet racial minorities are disproportionately represented in the arrest statistics: about 70 percent of all adolescents arrested were white, 28 percent were black, and around 3 percent were of other races
• These official statistics show that minority youths are arrested for serious criminal behavior at a rate that is disproportionate to their representation in the population.
• To many delinquency experts, this pattern reflects discrimination in the juvenile justice system. In other words, African American youths are more likely to be formally arrested by the police, who, in contrast, will treat white youths informally.
• One way to examine this issue is to compare the racial differences in self-reported data with those found in the official delinquency records. Given the disproportionate numbers of African Americans arrested, charges of racial discrimination would be supported if we found little difference between the number of self-reported minority and white crimes.
• Early researchers found that the relationship between race and self-reported delinquency was virtually nonexistent.
• This suggests that racial differences in the official crime data may reflect the fact that African American youths have a much greater chance of being arrested and officially processed.
• Self-report studies also suggest that the delinquent behavior rates of African American and white teenagers are generally similar and that differences in arrest statistics may indicate discrimination by police.
• The MTF survey, for example, generally shows that offending differences between African American and white youths are marginal; however, some experts warn that African American youths may underreport more serious crimes, limiting the ability of self-reports to be a valid indicator of racial differences in the crime rate.