Adults’ Perceptions of Law-Involved Minority Children and Youth

Abstract

This chapter reviews the role of race and ethnicity in shaping legal actors’ (e.g., police officers, attorneys, judges, jurors, parole officers) perceptions and judgments of youth victims and offenders. The intention of this review is to provide researchers with a comprehensive synthesis of the literature and to help front-line workers understand how race influences their interactions with racial minority youth. The chapter begins by considering racism in the criminal justice system generally and the research showing how race shapes perceptions of adult offenders and victims. The main focus is a review of research illustrating parallel findings in cases involving youthful offenders and victims. The chapter ends with recommendations for future research, as well as practical applications to improve law and public policy and to assist legal actors during their interactions with racial minority youth.

Effects of Intimate Partner Violence Perpetrator and Victim Race on Protective Order Determinations

“…We hypothesized that temporary and permanent protective orders will be more frequently allocated when victims are White than when they are racial minorities, consistent with existing research, revealing less punitive perpetrator outcomes in cases with Black and Hispanic versus White victims, generally (e.g., Burke et al, 2020). In addition, we expected that temporary and permanent protective orders will be more frequently allocated when perpetrators are racial minorities than when they are White, consistent with research linking criminal stereotypes with Black and Hispanic individuals (e.g., Eberhardt et al, 2006;Feldmeyer & Ulmer, 2011).…”

“…Psycho-legal research generally reveals that victim and perpetrator race play a role in virtually every stage of legal decision-making, ranging from police decisions to arrest to judicial sentencing decisions (for reviews, see Burke et al, 2020; Hunt, 2015). Indeed, officers are more likely to arrest and use force when suspected perpetrators are Black and Latinx than White (e.g., Goff & Kahn, 2012; Kochel et al, 2011); prosecutors are more likely to seek the death penalty when defendants are Black and Latinx than non-Black (e.g., Espinoza & Willis-Esqueda, 2015; Sommers & Marotta, 2014); judges are more likely to render punitive sentences for Black and Latinx defendants than for non-Black defendants (e.g., Mitchell, 2005); and White mock jurors are more likely to convict Black and Latinx defendants than White defendants (e.g., Devine & Caughlin, 2014).…”

The use of demeanour to assess the credibility of child victims in sexual interference trials

“…In child sexual abuse cases, these may relate to the ethnicity of children, their age, and the time they took to disclose the abuse (Golding et al, 2020). For example, compared to white children, greater responsibility for sexual abuse was attributed to black children (Bottoms et al, 2004), children of colour were considered less credible (Burke et al, 2020; Stevenson & Rivers, 2023), and in a daycare setting, compared to white girls, perpetrators were less likely to be arrested and convicted when victims were black girls (Williams & Farrell, 1990; see also Sedlak et al, 2005). The issue of implicit racial biases was also addressed.…”

When Disclosure Fails to Substantiate Abuse: Child and Perpetrator Race Predict Child Sexual Abuse Substantiation

“…Compounding the problem of increased abuse risk, there are myriad potential means by which race and racism may block justice for sexually abused children of color 1 not yet empirically explored. The influence of race on abuse substantiation likelihood is likely cumulative, manifesting at multiple intersection points within the legal systems (e.g., reporting, investigation, and adjudication; Burke et al, 2020). Moreover, the negative consequences of child sexual abuse (e.g., poor mental health, academic difficulties, unhealthy sexual behaviors, teen pregnancy, and delinquency; Amado, et al, 2015) highlight the need for research exploring predictors of sexual abuse substantiation likelihood.…”

“…Of course, abuse disclosure is unlikely to predict abuse substantiation if it is perceived as non-credible. Moreover, people perceive sexually abused children of color as less credible than their White counterparts (Willis, 1992; Burke et al, 2020; Golding et al, 2020), suggesting that abuse disclosure might be less likely to facilitate abuse substantiation for children of color as compared to White children.…”