Although minorities comprise 34% of the total population under 17 years of age in U.S., they constitute 62% of those charged in juvenile court. This disparity is also evident in rates of juvenile detention, where African American youths are detained five times and Hispanics two and a half times more often than Caucasian youths (Desai et al., 2006). African Americans are 14% of the U.S. population, yet they constitute 28% of arrests, 40% of inmates held in prisons and jails, and 42% of the population on death row. Hispanics and Native Americans are also alarmingly overrepresented in the criminal justice system (U.S. Census, 2008; Harrison and Beck, 2006; Snell, 2007). This overrepresentation of people of color in the nation’s criminal justice system, also referred to as Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC), is a serious issue in our society (Hartney and Vuong, 2009).
