America's Invisible Children: Latino Youth and the Failure of Justice
Summary
OVERVIEW
Latino youth are treated more harshly by the justice system than white youth, for the same offenses, at all stages in the justice system including police stops, arrests, detention, waiver to the adult criminal justice system, and sentencing. The first national analysis of the disparate treatment of Latino youth in the justice system, ¿Dónde Está la Justicia?, was released in 2002. Two years later, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) released Lost Opportunities: The Reality of Latinos in the U.S. Criminal Justice System, providing a similar review of Latinos in the criminal justice system. Both works documented how Latinos were virtually invisible in studies and publications in the justice field, and how state and federal agencies neither collected accurate data nor published Latino justice data if available. Not surprisingly, Latinos were rarely included in policy debates in the juvenile or criminal justice field. To ensure that the needs of Latino youth and families are heard and represented in current policy debates, the Campaign for Youth Justice and NCLR embarked upon compiling the most recent information available about Latino youth in the justice system, with a particular focus on youth tried as adults. This policy brief, like its predecessors, includes some sobering findings:
Description
Highlights
• On any given day, close to 18,000 Latino youth are incarcerated in America.The majority of these youth are incarcerated for non-violent offenses. Most Latino youth are held in juvenile detention facilities (41%) and juvenile long-term secure facilities (34%). However, one out of every four (24%) incarcerated Latino children is held in an adult prison or jail even though youth in adult facilities are in significant danger of suicide and rape.
• Latino youth are overrepresented in the U.S. justice system and receive harsher treatment than white youth. In order of rising disparities, Latino youth are: 4% more likely than white youth to be petitioned; 16% more likely than white youth to be adjudicated delinquent; 28% more likely than white youth to be detained; 41% more likely than white youth to receive an out-of-home placement; 43% more likely than white youth to be waived to the adult system; and 40% more likely to be admitted to adult prison. States with the highest levels of disparity of Latino youth in adult prison (rates over 5 times that for white youth) were California, Minnesota, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
• Nine out of ten (90%) Latino youth ages 10 to 17 live in states that permit the pre-trial detention in adult jails for youth prosecuted in the adult system. According to a study of 40 large urban jurisdictions, Latino youth prosecuted in the adult system are routinely incarcerated in adult jails. Overall, a higher proportion of white youth are released pretrial (60%) than any other racial or ethnic categories. Most (54%) Latino youth prosecuted in the adult system were detained pretrial; of the Latino youth detained pretrial, 72% were held in adult jails.8
