Author(s): The Sentencing Project
Published: July 15, 2021
Report Intro/Brief:
“Black youth are more than four times as likely to be detained or committed in juvenile facilities as their white peers, according to nationwide data collected in October 2019 and recently released. In 2015, Black youth’s incarceration rate was 5.0 times as high as their white peers, an all-time peak. That ratio fell to 4.4, a 13% decline.
Juvenile facilities, including 1,510 detention centers, residential treatment centers, group homes, and youth prisons held 36,479 youths as of October 2019. (These data do not include the 653 people under 18 in prisons at year-end 2019 or the estimated 2,900 people under 18 in jails at midyear 2019.)
Forty-one percent of youths in placement are Black, even though Black Americans comprise only 15% of all youth across the United States. Black youth are more likely to be in custody than white youth in every state but one: Hawaii. Between 2015 and 2019, juvenile placements fell by 24%. During these years, Black youth placements declined faster than white youth placements (54% vs. 36%), resulting in a smaller but still considerable disparity.”
>>> CLICK HERE to see all of Youth Today’s REPORT LIBRARY
