Color lines of social control: Juvenile justice administration in a racialized social system, 1825--2000.

Abstract

Despite considerable empirical research in the past thirty years and an ongoing federal initiative to address the issue, racial disparity in juvenile justice administration remains a pressing social problem, defying an understanding of its dimensions, causes, and solutions. This dissertation pursues greater historical perspective and a more nuanced sociological approach in an effort to improve our understanding of the race-effect in juvenile justice, and ultimately inform strategies of intervention. The dissertation makes use of three studies---asocial history of the handling of black delinquents, a study of the black child saving movement, and an empirical analysis of race and professional orientations among juvenile justice practitioners today---to trace the trajectories of color lines spanning nearly two centuries of U.S. juvenile justice administration in the African American experience. Interpreting findings from these studies through the lens of the court community paradigm injustice administration research and racialized social system paradigm of racial theory, the dissertation develops an ecological model for understanding past and present race-effects in delinquency case processing. It is proposed that juvenile justice can be understood as an idea and institution subject to dynamic processes of societal distillation, where concepts and resources are localized in specifically racialized contexts to yield fluid expressions of juvenile justice. Highlighting the social organizational basis of the race-effect, this approach sheds light on a broader range of discursive and structural forces which have shaped, transformed, and ameliorated levels of racial inequality in juvenile court communities over time. Of particular interest is the history of African American participation in juvenile justice administration, first as community-based activists and later as court professionals, and their potential impact on the problem of inequality. Findings suggest that while these practitioners have been similarly attuned to issues of system fairness and racial justice, a formidable social organizational chasm has disconnected their well-meaning intentions from the experiences of most would be beneficiaries. Ultimately, appreciating the embeddedness of juvenile justice administration in a racialized social system suggests the limited power of individual agency to redefine color lines of juvenile social control, and a need for comprehensive change.