The Contexts of Juvenile Justice Decision Making: When Race Matters

Chapter 4 Methods

Chapter 4 Methods The present research examines the extent adherence to a dominant correctional orientation(s) and perceptions of minorities as criminal, coming from dysfunctional families, and lacking respect for authority by decision-makers influence decision making and vary by juvenile court. The examination of these socialpsychological processes should broaden our understanding of the contexts of decision making including when and under what conditions race matters. In this chapter, the data and samples, the structural and organizational characteristics of the jurisdictions, the decision-making stages, the case-level variables, and analysis procedures used to accomplish this objective are discussed. DATA AND SAMPLES Multiple strategies are needed to fully search for the existence of racial bias and to provide explanations as to why and under what conditions it exists in each of the four jurisdictions.Therefore, the present research uses information from the Census and juvenile court case files and from semistructured interviews with juvenile court personnel. A random sample of court referrals identified as white (n ⫽ 5,883) was selected and disproportionate random sampling was used to select African American (n ⫽ 1,049) and Native American referrals (n ⫽ 276). Since sampling procedures varied across the four jurisdictions, different weight factors were used for whites, African Americans, and Native Americans to obtain sample proportions that reflect the racial distribution of all delinquency referrals in each court.1 The weighted sample size used in the present research is 7,208. The weighted sample for Bond is 2,020, Jackson 1,967, King 1,798, and Parks 1,423.2 African Americans were selected since it is this population that is most overrepresented in the system in Iowa (chapter 1 in this volume) and nationwide (Hamparian and Leiber, 1997). African Americans also comprise the largest 45 group of minority youth in three of the four jurisdictions (70 percent or more). Native Americans were included in the study because they make up a sizable percentage of minority youth in Jackson (22 percent) and there is a lack of research on the case processing of this racial group (Pope and Feyerherm, 1990; Pope et al, 2001). Although each of the four jurisdictions have the greatest number of minorities compared to all other jurisdictions in Iowa (Bureau of the Census, 1990), the overall small number of minority youth in each required the selection of delinquency referral cases for a twelve-year period from 1980 to 1991. Juvenile court personnel in each of the four jurisdictions were interviewed through semi-open-ended questions that focused on their beliefs concerning crime, family, the role of the juvenile court, disproportionate minority confinement (DMC), and findings specific to the quantitative component of the study (Leiber, 1993).The interviews were taped and transcribed and ranged in length from one to two hours. The personnel were interviewed in late 1991 and early 1992. Juvenile court probation officers (n ⫽ 72), public defenders (n ⫽ 4), prosecutors (n ⫽ 4), and judges (n ⫽ 4) comprise the nonrandom sample for a total of 84.3 Most of the juvenile court personnel participated in the study (90 percent) and a large majority are white (94 percent). The respondents are on average forty-one years old, male (64 percent), work in the social sciences (74 percent), and have ten years of job tenure. Cross-tabulations and analysis of variance (ANOVA) failed to show statistically significant differences on these background characteristics by jurisdiction (not shown). THE STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JURISDICTIONS Because of the importance that structural contexts have in increasing our understanding of race, decision making, and social control, information is provided that distinguishes each community on these indexes. The structural characteristics discussed were selected on the basis of theory and previous research (e.g., Tittle and Curran, 1988; Albonetti, 1991; Sampson and Laub, 1993). Table 4.1 provides the distributions on the population for each jurisdiction and race concentration. King has the largest population (n ⫽ 315,158), followed by Parks (n ⫽ 155,500), Bond (n ⫽ 130,224), and Jackson (n ⫽ 98,276). Eighty percent of the county’s population, however, lives in the largest city within Bond and Jackson, while the percentage is over 60% in the remaining two jurisdictions. The largest minority presence within the largest city is in Bond, followed closely by King and Parks. African American youth comprise 19 percent of all 46 The Contexts of Juvenile Justice Decision Making youth in the largest city within Bond and about 13 percent in Parks...