MINORITIES AND JUVENILE CASE DISPOSITIONS

Disposition data were collected in ten counties to examine overreprese ntation in the North Carolina justice system of juveniles from minorit y racial groups. The analysis proceeded in two phases. The first phase examined whether minority juveniles were at greater risk of adjudicat ion than their white counterparts, The second phase assessed the proba bility of confinement in a Division of Youth Services training school facility by race. In both instances, offender characteristics such as gender, age, type of offense, and prior official offending record were held constant. In the commitment analysis, an array of other control variables were available for study as well. Four primary findings emer ged: 1) About half of the juveniles referred to intake were African-Am erican, although African-Americans only comprised about one-fourth of the juvenile population in the community; 2) The racial distribution o f those juveniles who were adjudicated was similar to the racial distr ibution of those juveniles who were referred to intake; 3) African-Ame ricans made up about two-thirds of the population of juveniles who wer e committed even though they comprised less than half of the populatio n of those referred to intake and those who were actually adjudicated; 4) The use of control variables had little effect on these results an d the conclusions described above were relatively stable across the va rious counties included in the study.