Whites Blamed for 85% Nonwhite Juvenile Incarceration Rate in NY

A U.S. States Governor-appointed advisory group on juvenile justice has blamed whites for the fact that 66 percent of all incarcerated juveniles nationally are nonwhite, a figure which rises to 85 percent in the state of New York.

The Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ), which claims it is a national nonprofit association, but which has nice offices and a large staff, says in a policy position paper on its website entitled “Unequal Treatment of Minority Youth in the Juvenile Justice System” that “youth of color receive harsher sanctions than their white counterparts at every stage of the juvenile court system, from the point of surveillance (including racial profiling) to disposition/trial, sentencing, and incarceration.”

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The CJJ paper goes on to inform its readers that “youth of color comprise more than two-thirds of the juveniles held in confinement, but less than one-third of the U.S. youth population.”

Despite this statistic probably being inaccurate (primarily because the U.S. Census counts all people from Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East as white) the CJJ adds that “Latino youth represent approximately 12 percent of the U.S. population, yet 15 percent of the youth population sentenced to adult prisons.”

The CJJ demands that police, officers of the court, and correctional providers “ensure unbiased and rehabilitative treatment of all youth who come into contact with the justice system,” plainly implying that this is not currently the case, obviously due to the evil white racists who seem to lurk everywhere, putting nonwhite people down all the time.

At a recent conference organized by the CJJ, with the grand title “Fundamental Fairness: Working to Eliminate Racial Disparities in Juvenile Justice,” guest speaker Gladys Carrion, New York commissioner of children and family services, {snip} cited several reforms her administration has pursued, including eliminating status offenders in the system, investing in alternatives to detention, working with counties to develop risk assessment instruments, supporting home-based interventions, and introducing legislation to limit youth placement in state facilities to those who commit serious, dangerous felonies.

In other words, the way New York has addressed the embarrassing statistic which shows the amount of crime nonwhite youth commit, is to simply rearrange detention systems so that the figures are disguised.

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[The Coalition of Juvenile Justice’s webpage “Unequal Treatment of Minority Youth in the Juvenile Justice System” can be found here.]