Specialty Courts,Special for Whom?: Examining Racial Inequities in Participation

Abstract

This study investigates racial disparities in specialty court participation in Indiana, focusing on drug, veterans, and reentry courts between 2013 and 2020. Using multilevel modeling and principal component analysis, results indicate that Black individuals are significantly underrepresented in drug courts and overrepresented in reentry courts relative to arrest rates and county demographic composition. Informed by Critical Race Theory and inhabited institutions perspectives, these patterns are interpreted as reflecting organizational and structural processes that shape access to specialty courts prior to case-level decision-making. Findings suggest that observed disparities in participation align more closely with institutional mechanisms that structure eligibility and access to specialty courts than with individual discretionary decisions alone. Policy implications point toward the importance of examining how referral systems, program capacity, and administrative practices may be unevenly structured across court types and jurisdictions. More broadly, the study highlights persistent structural inequalities in access to diversion and specialty court programs and points to the importance of institutional and longitudinal analyses of specialty court access.