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CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS RELEASE |
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| www.cjcj.org |
| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 54 Dore Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
For Immediate Release: January 23, 2002
CONTACT: Daniel Macallair
E-mail: [dmacallair@cjcj.org]
Tel: (415) 621-5661 x310
Washington, D.C.- While concerns over racial fairness and equality plague most of the nation’s criminal justice systems, a new study finds that Portland actually both reduced racial disparity in juvenile detention and lowered juvenile crime. Portland’s breakthrough approach in reducing racial disparity is being touted as a "national model" to be duplicated across the country.
According to a new analysis of Multnomah County data by the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute (JPI), racial disparities in Multnomah’s juvenile detention center declined sharply through the 1990s. JPI found that in 1994, minority youth in Multnomah County were 31% more likely to be detained than white youth when they were referred to the Department of Community Justice. By 2000, minority and White youth experienced identical detention rates. The "Multnomah Model" will be discussed at a national conference of juvenile justice experts being convened by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Portland this weekend (January 25th to 27th).
"This analysis shows that we’ve made our detention system more effective in getting kids the services and programs they need, without compromising public safety," says Amy Holmes Hehn, Multnomah Senior Deputy District Attorney assigned to juveniles. "Today, we can show the nation how to help ensure that White youth and youth of color have the same potential for rehabilitation in the community, rather than being unnecessarily locked in detention."
Nationwide, minority youth make up 34% of the youth population, but 63% of the youth in custody. African American youth, just 15% of America’s youth population, make up 44% of the youth in detention. As the nation’s detention systems grew throughout the 1980s and 1990s, 4 out of 5 new youth added to detention were minorities.
Multnomah County was part of the same discouraging national story. In 1994, African Americans represented 10% of the youth population, and Hispanics 6%, but both groups were twice as likely as Whites to be detained.
Over the last six years, Multnomah County has been involved in the juvenile detention alternatives initiative (JDAI), conceived of and funded by the Casey Foundation. At the outset of the county’s participation in JDAI, 42% of minority youth who were referred to detention were detained, while 32% of White youth were detained. In 2000, an identical 22% of minority and White youth were detained. As Multnomah County’s Department of Community Justice (DCJ) reformed its procedures for dealing with all youth after arrest, the proportion of minority and White youth sent to detention dropped (See CHART).
As the use of detention in Multnomah County became more equitable, the DCJ also reduced the number of youth entering detention each year, and saw juvenile crime rates decline. Between 1994 and 2000, the number of youth detentions dropped by half for all youth (from 1107 in 1994, to 478 in 2000), and by half for African American and Hispanic youth. During approximately the same period (from 1995 to 2000), the number of juveniles arrested for violent crimes dropped 24%, and the number of juveniles arrested for property crimes dropped 40%. The total crime rate for youth dropped 26% during this period.
"Multnomah County has shown the country that you can reduce racial disparities in juvenile justice, make more modest use of detention, and still uphold public safety," stated JPI President and analysis co-author Vincent Schiraldi. "Cities and states around the country will be looking at the Multnomah model for some time to come."
"Multnomah County is among a handful of places that has evened the odds that White youth and youth of color will face detention," says Bart Lubow, Senior Associate with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, one of the nation’s foremost experts on juvenile detention reform. "Portland is trail blazing a route that the rest of the nation should consider following."
To promote better outcomes for African-American, Hispanic and Asian and Native-American youth, Multnomah County brought in a series of juvenile detention reforms, including reducing the time youth have to wait to have their cases processed; more objective risk assessment instruments; hiring a more diverse workforce; developing alternatives to detention programs in communities of color; racial and cultural sensitivity training for staff; and resources for monitoring over-representation in the juvenile justice system.
"These programs are promoting better outcomes for all youth, but in particular, the juvenile justice system, with better intervention strategies, now works for African American, Latino and other minority children in the way it works for White youth," says Kay Toran, President and CEO, Volunteers of America-Oregon. "We have found a formula that gives kids a chance to make a better choice."
"In the past, youth were jailed because we did not have anywhere else to address their problems," says Judge Elizabeth Welch. "Today, I don’t need to detain youth of color unnecessarily, and this county has successfully reduced the barriers that kids of color once faced in getting treatment in their communities."
The data analyzed by JPI was provided by the Multnomah County Department of Community Justice, Research and Evaluation Unit. This analysis will be published in full in an upcoming edition of the Annie Casey Foundations’ Journal Advo Cacy, and in their monograph series on detention reform, Pathways. This report was supported by a generous grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation (www.aecf.org).
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