CJJ Today

By Marie Williams, JD Executive Director Coalition for Juvenile Justice All children deserve to be treated fairly in the juvenile justice system. Unfortunately, all too often, that is not the case for minority youth. Under the Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention Act (JJDPA), states are required to address disproportionality of racial, ethnic and linguistic minority youth at every stage of the juvenile justice system, also known as disproportionate minority contact (DMC). In 2011, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention reported that only 34 states had implemented DMC systems improvement and delinquency prevention strategies. Those efforts, however, largely ignored a significant number of youth in the justice system: those at risk for, or charged with status offenses.