The Child Welfare League of America, civil rights groups, and the Building Blocks for Youth initiative call for immediate action to address racial disparities in the juvenile justice system. A comprehensive new report reveals that youth of color experience more severe treatment than their white peers at every stage of the juvenile justice process. This treatment puts minority youth at a "cumulative disadvantage" that has led to an unjust over-representation of these young people in confinement across the nation. For instance, in every offense category - person, property, drug, public order - a substantially greater percentage of African American youth were detained than white youth.

The report, "And Justice for Some," commissioned by the Building Blocks for Youth initiative and prepared by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), provides the most complete and up-to-date comparison of state and federal data on arrest, referral, detention, case processing, waiver to adult court, and incarceration.

Key findings include:

* Although minority youth are one-third of the adolescent population in the United States, three out of four youth admitted to state prisons in 1997 were minorities.
* Minority youth are over-represented in the detained population in nearly every state.
* Even when charged with the same offenses - minority youth were less likely to be placed on probation than white youth, were much more likely to be waived to criminal court, and African American youth with no prior admissions to locked facilities were six times more likely to be incarcerated than white youth with the same background. Latino youth were three times more likely to be incarcerated than white youth.

The full report, "And Justice for Some," is available at www.buildingblocksforyouth.org/justiceforsome.

For more information contact Tim Briceland-Betts at 202-942-0256 or bricebet@cwla.org.