Less interest,less treatment: Mexican‐American youth and the Los Angeles Juvenile Court in the Great Depression era

Abstract

This study uses case records from the Los Angeles Juvenile Court to examine how racial discrimination played out in juvenile justice before the decline of public confidence in rehabilitation in the 1960s and 1970s. Using qualitative and quantitative methodologies, I compare how Mexican‐American and white boys (ages 10–17) were treated by the juvenile court during the Great Depression era. I find that although Mexican‐American boys were more likely to be arrested and petitioned to court, they were less likely to receive out‐of‐family placements because court officials viewed these placements as beneficial and were less interested in rehabilitating minority than white youth. I compare these results with the current overrepresentation of minorities in institutional confinement and with contemporary studies that find that black youth are punished more severely than comparable whites. My research suggests that there have been major philosophical changes in how officials in the juvenile justice system view out‐of‐family placements, and that patterns of discrimination in juvenile justice depend upon how officials in courts and correctional institutions view the rehabilitative potential of their interventions.