Product Review: Decision Making and Juvenile Justice: An Analysis of Bias in Case Processing

In Decision Making and Juvenile Justice, Paul Tracy reports the results of a multipronged study of minority overrepresentation in the Texas juvenile justice system. Conducted at the behest of the Texas Criminal Justice Division as part of its efforts to comply with the disproportionate minority confinement (DSO) mandate of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, the study entailed separate analyses of six distinct data sets: aggregate arrest data and juvenile probation department referral statistics for the state as a whole; individual-level case processing data for separately drawn samples of referrals in three Texas counties of varying sizes; and a statewide telephone survey of judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation officers, police officers, and juvenile correctional facility staff. Tracy begins with a defense of his thesis that “the available research is largely inconclusive, and despite the absence of a coherent body of results, the federal agency responsible for monitoring disproportionate minority confinement has exaggerated, if not mischaracterized, the issue of racial bias in the juvenile justice system” (p. 2). He then carries the reader through sequential discussions of findings pertaining to each of the data sets he analyzed, building the empirical foundation for his conclusion that minority overrepresentation results almost exclusively from “differential involvement” of minority youth in delinquent behavior rather than from “differential selection” for harsh treatment. Although many readers will find reason to quarrel with some aspects of his methodology, Tracy’s overall approach seems a reasonable enough response to the limitations of his data. His interpretation of the findings is more troublesome, especially with respect to the influence of race and ethnicity on case processing decisions in individual cases. He reports, consistent with most methodologically rigorous earlier research, that the seriousness of the offense and the child’s prior record are by far the most significant factors in decisions at each of the four stages of the juvenile justice process he examined (i.e., detention, referral to district attorney, referral to court, and sentence to secure facility). Although there was little consistency in the influence of other variables across counties or decision points, he did find that race, ethnicity, gender, and even such factors as school enrollment and parents’ marital status, affect some decisions. In interpreting the findings, however, he goes to great lengths to explain away or minimize the evidence of racial and ethnic disparity that he uncovered. For example, his analysis reveals differential pretrial detention decisions based on ethnicity in two counties and on race in one. In reporting the evidence of harsher treatment for Hispanic youth in one of the counties, however, he emphasizes his belief that “if gang membership had been included in the models, it likely would have mitigated the impact of being Hispanic, or at least reduced the disparity between Hispanic and Anglo youth” (p. 85). Data for another county revealed that, among males, “being African American is the third strongest correlate of the detention decision” (p. 110), yet he concludes that “there appears to be only a limited and isolated race/ethnicity effect” in the county (p. 110). While the findings reported in this study do serve to refute allegations of pervasive and systemic racism in the Texas juvenile justice system, I am unable to see how they offer much of a foundation for Tracy’s conclusion that “the disproportionate minority confinement issue with its presumptive stance of racial and ethnic discrimination must be unmasked and exposed as an illadvised political diversion” (p. 175). Instead, the data show that the extent of differential treatment varies tremendously across decision points and across jurisdictions. Although some evidence of differential treatment surfaced in each of the three counties and at