Racial and Ethnic Groups
In-depth data on other racial and ethnic groups, in particular Latinos, American Indians, and Asians, are sorely lacking in the literature to date. More comprehensive data collection is now mandated through the OJJDP formula grant process, which should improve our understanding of the complex relationships between race, ethnicity, and overrepresentation.
DMC has been extensively reviewed by the National Research Council Panel on Juvenile Crime and other researchers. Studies have concluded that African American youth are overrepresented at all stages of the juvenile justice system, and this disproportionality can be explained by numerous theoretical hypotheses. There is a large body of epidemiolog- ical research documenting the extent of overrepresentation of African American youth in the juvenile justice system.
Keeping the limitations of the extant data in mind, we can generalize that African American overrepresentation in juvenile justice is attributable to a variety of social and structural problems and that it needs to be addressed through community action to attend to inequality as well as through justice system intervention and change. There is little research investigating the extent that African American overrepresentation can be explained by differences in risk factors.
