Fifty years later, Martin's quote is still an eerily accurate description of the juvenile justice system in the United States. In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, Native American juveniles are two and a half times as likely as White youth to be arrested rather than cited, Black juveniles are more than twice as likely to be arrested as are White juveniles, and Latinx juveniles are almost twice as likely. Our data—from Oklahoma City—are consistent with national levels of overrepresentation by race and ethnicity in the juvenile justice system. This overrepresentation has been relatively consistent since it was first studied. In 1970, four years before the 1974 Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, Black juveniles were 2.3 times as likely as White juveniles to be arrested nationally (Racial Disparities in Youth Commitments and Arrests, 2016). In almost 50 years, we have done little to lessen the impact of disproportionate minority contact (DMC).

This book examines how structural racism dramatically impacts the lives of non-White youth through their interactions with the juvenile justice system. Specifically, we aim to answer the question: To what extent is minority overrepresentation in the juvenile justice system due to differential involvement/behavior (i.e., non-White youth commit crimes at a higher rate) and to what extent is minority overrepresentation attributable to differential treatment (i.e., racism/racial bias within the system)? We hypothesize that non-White youth are over-policed, with the rationalization of over-policing resting upon juvenile justice officials incorrectly overgeneralizing the high rates of violent crime among a small number of non-White youth to include all or most non-White youth.