Race, Ethnic, and Gender Divides in Juvenile Court Sanctioning and Rehabilitative Intervention

Objectives: Drawing on focal concerns theory, as well as scholarship on the juvenile court’s mandate to consider youth culpability and amenability to treatment, we develop hypotheses that seek to examine whether the court will (1) punish Whites less severely and (2) be more likely to intervene with Whites through rehabilitative intervention and, simultaneously, be more punitive and less rehabilitative with minorities, and, in particular, Black males. Method: Florida juvenile court referral data and multinomial logistic regression analyses are used to examine multicategory disposition and “subdisposition” measures. Results: Findings suggest that minority youth, especially Black males, are not only more likely to receive punitive sanctions, they also are less likely than White youth to receive rehabilitative interventions and instead experience significantly higher rates of dismissals. The analyses indicate that similar racial and ethnic disparities emerge when “subdispositions”—specifically, placement options within diversion and probation—are examined. Conclusions: The results underscore the salience of race, ethnicity, and gender in juvenile court decisions about punitive sanctioning and rehabilitative intervention, as well as the importance of employing multicategory disposition measures that better reflect the range of sanctioning and intervention options available to the court.