RACISM'S ROLE IN THE STATE'S JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM

OUR FUTURE lies in our children, we must all be concerned about a
recent ACLU report that illustrates how racism in the Massachusetts
juvenile justice system is failing the most vulnerable of our society.

The report notes, as the state has long acknowledged, that
Massachusetts has a serious problem with over-representation of
minority youth in its juvenile justice system. Simply put: Once
arrested, African-American kids are imprisoned at far higher rates
than white kids. Specifically, the report found that while black youth
represent 23 percent of the Commonwealth's juvenile population and
about a quarter of all youth arrested, they constitute 63 percent of
all juveniles who are taken from their homes and locked up.

These numbers suggest that institutional racism has infected the
juvenile justice system. It is not a question of who gets arrested,
but of what happens after an arrest is made.

"White kids have more self-reporting of drug abuse than kids of
color," says Joshua Dohan, director of Youth Advocacy of the
Committee for Public Counsel Services. "But when kids from wealthier
(often white) neighborhoods get in trouble, generally the police
officer who is involved and the probation department look at the kids
and say, 'Well, this kid could go to college, could be a doctor or
lawyer. We might mess that up if we pull him out of home or school and
give him a record.' When kids of color are involved, we tend to see
only the bad behavior and how we need to punish him."

The exercise of discretion that cuts against minority youth may lie at
different places in the juvenile justice system. Consider the number
of discretionary decisions that are made after an arrest: Officials
must decide the nature and seriousness of the charge, whether the
youth will be put on probation or held in detention, and the length
and nature of the sentence.

"One of the reasons that white kids have more potential is that we
imagine it for them," says Dohan. "We need to do the same for our
kids of color."

Imagining a bright future is hard for the 3,300 children under
commitment at any given time in the Massachusetts juvenile justice
system. Most live in little prisons surrounded by barbed wire, in
facilities that resemble locked dormitories. A lack of resources at
the Department of Youth Services means that there are few hobby areas
or outside spaces, so the kids spend endless hours watching television
in a cafeteria.

It's hard to imagine anyone - particularly an impressionable teenager
- - who could envision a horizon beyond the criminal justice system from
this vantage point.

Not surprisingly, somewhere between 80-90 percent of kids in the
juvenile system nationwide end up in the criminal justice system as
adults. As a result, racial disparities persist into the adult system,
as reflected in a recent Human Rights Watch report that found that
blacks comprise only 5.4 percent of the Massachusetts population but
constitute 26.3 percent of our adult prison population.

Acknowledging the problem is a crucial - but only a first - step
toward solving it. The ACLU report documents the Commonwealth's
10-year failure to address the problem of over-representation of
minority youth in the juvenile justice system. It also provides
specific proposals for the state to, at a minimum, comply with
requirements of federal law.

First, key state agencies - the Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee
and the Executive Office of Public Safety - need to make the
elimination of racial disparities a priority. Governor Romney's
administration inherited this problem, but it is now the governor's
responsibility to acknowledge the problem and commit to finding - and
funding - a solution.

Second, we need to keep track of our children. At this point, the
Commonwealth doesn't even keep statistics on Latino youth in the
juvenile justice system, and there is no centralized information
system to track any of these kids from arrest to adjudication. We need
to create indicators of our success and failure by collecting
comparative race data on who is stopped, searched, and arrested. We
also need to keep track of what happens to kids after they are
arrested - who is confined and for how long, and who is allowed to
return to their home and school? We need to know not only what is
happening to our children in the system, but also why it is happening.

Third, we need to attack the root causes of racial disparities in our
justice system. All children deserve access to adequate legal counsel
and educational alternatives to incarceration. The professionals at
the Department of Youth Services are good at their jobs and generally
know what works with these kids. What these professionals need are the
educational resources to work with the teens who truly need to be in
detention and an end to overcrowding of the system by kids who would
be better served remaining at home and in school.

It is time for Massachusetts leaders to acknowledge the pervasive
racism in the juvenile justice system and to commit to working with
all levels of law enforcement to change it.