Reducing Racial Disparities in Juvenile Detention

From the introduction:

“In this Pathway we explore why youth of color are overrepresented in the juvenile detention system and review what has been done in some sites to reduce the number of minority youth in detention. Dealing with disparity in the use of detention has been one of the most challenging pieces of the detention reform puzzle in the different jurisdictions working on the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI). As the preface notes, since the early 1990s, the Foundation has worked closely with a series of communities to promote detention reform, including Cook County, IL; Multnomah County, OR; Sacramento County, CA; and Santa Cruz County, CA. While JDAI was not originally conceived as a DMC reduction program, the sites wrestled with the issue for varying periods of time. Together, the stories of what occurred in the JDAI sites provide important guidance on how to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the use of detention.”