Minority Youth And Crime Essay

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Pages: 3

Minority Youth and Crime Africans Americans are disproportionately represented at all stages of the America’s criminal justice system. It has been noted that Blacks make up thirty one percent of all individuals arrested, while only being seventeen percent of the total population. Crime in the United States have been steadily decreasing within the last few decades, yet young Black males are two times more likely to be arrested than White youth (Rovner, 2014). It has been noted that violence within school grounds are now enforced by the police not by the school’s administrators, which has led the disproportionate disenfranchisement of young African American males (Basch, 2011). According to Rovner (2014), African American adolescents are nearly two times more likely than White youths to be placed in detention, which negatively impacts their educational careers. …show more content…
Giving youth offenders another opportunity and not sending them to prison, will enable them to have a clear criminal record as adults. It has been noted that young Blacks are often more likely to be incarcerated in adult facilities. In 2002, there were about 4,000 youth under the age of 18 serving a prison term in an adult facility and nearly sixty percent were African American (And Justice for Some, 2007). It has been noted that young Whites are also more likely to be sentenced to probation than young African Americans, even if they committed the same type of crime. When comparing drug offenses committed by adolescents in 2003, seventy five percent of teenage Whites got probation and only twenty two percent of African Americans received such sentence (And Justice for Some, 2007). In order to prevent violence in schools, programs can be implemented to reduce young adult’s aggression and other misbehavior that occurs at schools (Basch,