DISPARITIES IN JUSTICE SYSTEM

Report: Minority youths treated more harshly than whites from arrest to
sentencing.

Black and Latino youths are treated more severely than white teenagers
charged with comparable crimes at every step of the juvenile justice
system, according to a comprehensive report released Tuesday that was
sponsored by the Justice Department and six of the nation's leading
foundations.

The report found that minority youths are more likely than their white
counterparts to be arrested, held in jail, sent to juvenile or adult
court for trial, convicted and given longer prison terms, leading to a
situation in which the impact is magnified with each additional step
into the juvenile justice system.

In some cases, the disparities are stunning. Among young people who
have not been sent to a juvenile prison before, blacks are more than
six times as likely as whites to be sentenced by juvenile courts to
prison. For those young people charged with a violent crime who have
not been in juvenile prison previously, black teens are nine times
more likely than whites to be sentenced to juvenile prison. For those
charged with drug offenses, black youths are 48 times more likely than
whites to be sentenced to juvenile prison.

Similarly, white youths charged with violent offenses are incarcerated
for an average of 193 days after trial, but blacks are incarcerated an
average of 254 days and Latinos are incarcerated an average of 305
days.

``The implications of these disparities are very serious,'' said Mark
Soler, the president of the Youth Law Center, a research and advocacy
group in Washington who is also the leader of the coalition of civil
rights and youth advocacy organizations that organized the research
project.

``These disparities accumulate, and they make it hard for members of
the minority community to complete their education, get jobs and be
good husbands and fathers,'' Soler said.

The report, ``And Justice for Some,'' does not address why such sharp
racial imbalances exist. But Soler suggested that the cause lay not so
much in overt discrimination as in ``the stereotypes that the
decision-makers at each point of the system rely on.'' A judge looking
at a young person, Soler said, may be influenced by the defendant's
baggy jeans or the fact that he does not have a father.

The report can be found at www.buildingblocksforyouth.org on the
Web.

In the past, when studies have found racial disparities in the number
of adult black or Latino prison inmates, critics have asserted that
the cause was simply that members of minorities committed a
disproportionate number of crimes. That may be true, Soler said, but
it does not account for the extreme disparities found in the report,
nor for disparities at each stage of the juvenile justice process.

``When you look at this data, it is undeniable that race is a
factor,'' Soler said.

The report, the most thorough of its kind, is based on national and
state data initially compiled by the FBI; the Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention, a Justice Department agency; the
Census Bureau; and the National Center for Juvenile Justice, the
research arm of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court
Judges. The report was written by Eileen Poe-Yamagata and Michael A.
Jones, senior researchers with the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency in San Francisco.

An unusual feature of the report is that its costs were underwritten
by the Justice Department and several leading foundations: the Ford
Foundation; the MacArthur Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation; the
Walter Johnson 46oundation; the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which
specializes in issues relating to young people; and the Center on
Crime, Communities and Culture of George Soros' Open Society Institute.

Hugh B. Price, the president of the National Urban League, said that
``this report leaves no doubt that we are faced with a very serious
national civil rights issue, virtually making our system juvenile
injustice.''

Soler and the coalition that put the report together want Congress to
give the Justice Department at least $100 million to reduce racial
disparities and require states to spend a quarter of their federal
juvenile justice grants on the issue.