Background:
The Racial and Ethnic Disparities (RED) Advisory Committee is a branch of the Utah Board of Juvenile Justice that was created to help address the fourth core protection of the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. This requires states to assess and address racial and ethnic disparities at key points in the youth justice system.
While the genesis to the creation of the RED Advisory Committee was a federal mandate, there is unified commitment across all juvenile justice stakeholders to tackle the overrepresentation of minority youth across systems. Read more about RED reduction efforts across the state in the “Take Aways” tab.
Purpose of this Document:
In partnership with Utah’s Juvenile Court, Juvenile Justice and Youth Services, the Utah State Board of Education, and the Bureau of Criminal Identification, data is collected on an array of points of contact a youth may have with the juvenile justice system on an annual basis. This information is submitted to the Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention to be in compliance with federal grant requirements. The information is further presented to relevant stakeholders to assist in the guidance of RED reduction efforts.
This presentation document serves to provide an overview of those points of contact from a racial and ethnic disparity lens. It is important to note the information presented is on a descriptive level and is only one of many potential methods that could be utilized to understand if disparity is present. Caution is advised in any causal interpretation of the information presented here. Rather, the information should serve as guidance for further inquiry and study of understanding.
Racial and Ethnic Disparities (RED) research in Utah has focused on youth contact at various points of the juvenile justice system as shown in the figure. These points include contact before a youth enter the system but is not an exhaustive list of other contacts a youth may have while in the system
To simplify the process, imagine a youth being arrested and then referred to court. From there, the youth may be potentially diverted from the system with no more formal court processing or they may be petitioned to court. They may also be held in locked detention awaiting a hearing with a judge. But the majority of youths go from a petition to a disposition where they may be given a probation order, a community placement disposition, or a secure care disposition
A common way to measure disparity is to compare a group’s general population share to their representation at different point of contacts
If these shares are higher when a youth enters the juvenile justice system, then overrepresentation exists. In other words, there is disparity between groups
As seen in the figure to the left, Minority youths make up around 28% of Utah’s youth population. Then for equity, Minority youths would make up a similar share at various points of contact in our juvenile justice system
Now let us see if this is the case…
While Minority youths account for about 28% of the general youth population, they make up about:
32% of arrests
41% of referrals to court
Following a court referral, youth have the opportunity to be diverted form the system through the use of a Nonjudicial Adjustment if certain criteria are met. We see here minority youth only make up 37% of all diversions, thus we continue to see a higher share of minority youth making up 39% of petitions and subsequently 59% of pre-trial locked detention.
Once we reach the point of dispositions, meaning a youth has seen a judge. We see that minority youth make up:
40% of intake probation (IP) orders
47% of formal probation (FP) orders
51% of community placement (CP) dispositions, and
75% of secure care (SC) dispositions
Since these percentages are substantially higher than their population share, in particular for secure care dispositions, the system’s most restrictive point of contact, disparity between minority and white youth, exist.
The Relative Rate Index (RRI) can help us understand if disparity stays the same, increase, or decrease as youth move through the system by taking into account the previous point of contact. The RRI is simply a ratio between two percentage shares that measures either:
For example, when the RRI measures at 2, it means that one group is twice as likely as the other groups to experience an event.
Taking into account the population size for each respective group:
In 2019 the RRI measured at almost 1.5, implying that minority youth were 50% more likely to be arrested than white youth
However, the RRI decreased in 2020 as well as 2021
Taking into account the arrest rate for each respective group, we see disparity slowly increasing at the point of court referral for minority youth with the RRI measured in 2021 at almost 1.5. This means minority youth were 50% more likely to be referred to court than white youth.
From a Court Referral, a youth may be diverted from formal court processing through a Non-Judicial Adjustment. Here we see minority youth are being diverted about 14% less than white youth for 2021.
If a youth is not diverted, they may move forward to a petition where they will see a judge for a disposition decision
Here, we see a close parity between minority and white youth for 2020 and 2021
Once a youth is petitioned before the court, the youth may be ordered to locked detention pending a hearing with a judge
In 2021, minority youths were 2.3 times more likely to get admitted to pre-trial locked detention, based on their share of petitions compared to white youths, an increase from 2019 and 2020
Utah has two levels of court ordered probation: Intake Probation and Formal Probation. Initially, all youths who enter the justice system are given a probation officer regardless of the severity of the alleged offense. If youths assess at a higher risk level and present with higher needs, they may be placed on Formal Probation where there will be a higher level of supervision by the Juvenile Court
In 2020 and 2021, Intake Probation was close to parity for minority and white youth
In 2020, Formal Probation was close to parity for minority and white youth. However in 2021 we see that minority youth were 40% more likely to receive a Formal Probation order than white youth.
When looking at Community Placement, minority youth were 60% more likely than white youth to be given a disposition on this form of supervision in the community .
At Secure Care, the system’s most restrictive and serious placement, minority youth were 4.5 times more likely than white youths to be given this disposition in 2021, an increase from 2019 and 2020
It is important to note that while the numbers of secure care dispositions overall in 2021 (less than 100), the disparity has grown between minority and white youth
Key Points:
Data from Fiscal Year 2021 shows us that minority youth are overrepresented at almost every point of contact from arrest, to referral, locked detention, formal probation, community placement, and secure care
We see an underrepresentation of minority youth being diverted from formal court processing
We see more minority youth being held in Locked Detention while awaiting a hearing with a judge
Minority youth continue to be overrepresented at the point of Secure Care, the most restrictive point of contact. In Fiscal Year 2021, Minority youth were almost 5 times as likely to receive a secure care disposition when compared to white youth.
Reducing RED in Utah:
Decades of research has shown that racial-and-ethnic disparities persists across Utah’s juvenile justice system. Action-oriented solutions in ending over-representation by racial and ethnic groups requires a multifaceted approach. This includes: continuing education, awareness and collaboration with: stakeholders across the board, the general community, schools, law enforcement, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, probation officers & juvenile justice workers. It further requires on-going data collections and processes to measure improvements across the system’s different points of contact.
Based on current efforts from stakeholders on the back end of the system including Utah’s Juvenile Court and Juvenile Justice and Youth Services, it may be valuable to target more front end points of contact such as the points pre-referral and diversion.
A recent study on Utah’s Non-judicial Process provides insight into how diversion impacts different populations, specifically how minority youth have a lower rate of success when compared to their peers. This finding underscores the importance of further exploring this area of disparity.
Please see justice.utah.gov for more information on the related research studies.
Defining Over- & Under-Representation:
Group representation of the youth population:
Representation at a point of contact:
This group is over-represented at this point of contact
Why RRI?
The RRI is simply a ratio between 2 percentage share of the groups of interest. When this ratio equals to 1, we have parity. When the ratio is above or below 1, we have overrepresentation and underrepresentation.
While the sum of these two RRI’s can sum up to 2 (when the percentage shares that go into an NJA and Petition are equal for both groups), they are unlikley to do so. This is because the RRI is calculated as the ratio between two percentage shares across different groups. Hence the sum of these do not have to adhere to the strict qualifications noted above.
Notes about the Data:
The data presented here include Utah numbers for the 2019, 2020, and 2021 Federal Fiscal Year
Population numbers are collected by the Utah State Board of Education
Arrest numbers are collected by BCI through the Uniform Crime Reporting Program. These arrests include youths who were arrested and may be sent home with their parents and or guardian. These numbers are non-duplicative.
The Uniform Crime Reporting Program group Asians and Native Hawaiians together. Analysis at the point of arrest divide this number evenly to show separate groups
Pre-adjudicatory Locked Detention numbers are collected by Juvenile Justice Services. These include duplicated cases
Court Referrals, Community Placement, and Secure Care numbers are collected by Juvenile Court through their database CARE. Unit of analysis are episode based
Community Placement is a residential placements for youths committed to JJS Custody by the Juvenile Court. These include proctor care, group homes, and boarding schools
Secure Care are long-term locked confinement facilities for serious and habitual delinquent youths who are high risk to reoffend
Community Placement and Secure Care numbers represent dispositions. Unit of analysis are episode based (i.e, multiple dispositions were counted only one time based on a disposition order date)
Certain points of contacts have a share of youths whose race-ethnicity is unknown. These youth are not included here