Adding Color to a Black and White Picture: Using Qualitative Data to Explain Racial Disproportionality in the Juvenile Justice System

Abstract

For more than three decades sociologists, criminologists, and other social scientists have debated why minorities, and specifically African Americans, are overrepresented in both the adult and juvenile justice system in this country. Unfortunately, decades of research have not brought us any closer to solutions or increased our understanding of why the problem persists. The hegemony of quantitative methodologies in disproportionality research has limited attention to the stages of the juvenile justice system that can be measured empirically and ignores what occurs before the stage of arrest. The data reported in this article are drawn from a larger study on minority disproportionality in the juvenile justice system in a western state, which combined both quantitative and qualitative techniques. The article highlights participant observation data on encounters between police and youths of color. The qualitative data collected for the study demonstrate how information collected through interviews and field observations can be used to increase our understanding of the disproportionality dilemma.