You’ve likely heard the terms “implicit bias,” and “racial and ethnic disparities”(RED). These phrases are being absorbed into our culture and serving as guideposts toward more equitable systems.
At TJJD, the RED Working Group has promoted several changes as it strives to create a better workplace and improve the environment for youth at TJJD, said Shelley McKinley, chairwoman of the TJJD RED Working Group and assistant superintendent of education at TJJD.
To kick off its efforts, the RED group trained with a national expert in juvenile justice, Mark Soler. (See him here speaking about disproportionate minority contact.) Soler offered guidance as the group set goals and reached to elevate the conversation about racial and ethnic inequities.
RED IS VITAL TO BEST PRACTICESSoler worked with TJJD as part of the YICPM program – Youth in Custody Practice Model -- in which the Texas agency is aligning its operations with national, research-based, best practices. YICPM requires participating agencies like TJJD to examine racial and ethnic disparities and find ways to eliminate them.
It is well documented that youth of color in juvenile justice systems “receive harsher penalties than their white counterparts at every stage of case processing (e.g. arrest, referral to court, diversion, detention, petition, adjudication, disposition),” according to the YICPM report of March 2016.*
Working against this sobering backdrop of broad disproportionate treatment of youth of color, Soler endorsed the TJJD RED group’s decision to apply RED tracking – sorting out discipline incidents by race and ethnicity -- because it can have an outsized impact.
Making discipline more fair can benefit individual youth while also cultivating a more positive culture for all, McKinley explained.
Now that facilities are tracking security referrals and use of force against ethnic and racial demographics (facilities complete RED Report Cards every six months), those in the field will be better equipped to assess their practices using hard data and uncover inequities.
A first step has been to take a hard look at and tamp down on security referrals, which disproportionately impact African American youth. The RED Working Group believes more steps will follow as the data helps them understand why black youth so often face disproportionate sanctions.
The hope: A worn punitive feedback loop in which racial and ethnic disparities are exacerbated can be turned around, yielding better outcomes.
NEW THINKING LEADS TO RACE-NEUTRAL POLICIESThe data is so important because relying on human emotions or “how things have always been done” can stymie progress. That’s why the RED is pressing for fresh thinking across all divisions and operations at TJJD.
In training, that has meant working with staff to understand everyone has implicit, unconscious biases around race, ethnicity (and other sensitive issues) that contribute to their decision-making. This awareness can help people think through matters more objectively. In September 2017, TJJD inaugurated a training course Cultural Equity to help staff move in this direction.
Staff are learning that even practices that appear to be race neutral on their face may not be.
RED group analysis found a prime example in the methodology used to decide which kids are placed into medium, as opposed to high, restriction facilities, said Rebecca Walters, director of Youth Placement and Program Development.
TJJD was assigning white kids to medium restriction facilities more often than black youth – relative to their total population. Examination found that the set of criteria being used, which included a review of the youth’s juvenile record, was impacting African American youth disproportionately.
“The policy might have appeared to be race and ethnically neutral, but as we really thought about the factors that contribute to the decision of who is eligible to go into medium restriction, such as prior police record and number of prior arrests for violent offenses, you start to see how disproportionality in what happens to kids before they get here, could result in disparities,” Walters said.
The agency is now taking a closer look at individual cases to assure that black youth have a fair chance to land in a medium restriction facility, she said.
This sort of new thinking is being injected into policy is other direct ways. Policy Proposal Forms at TJJD now include a RED entry that asks for employees to consider RED impacts, positive and negative, when they propose a policy change, McKinley said.
“You’re asking people to think about this. Before, the assumption was made that it (the policy change) wouldn’t have an impact,” McKinley said. But that wasn’t necessarily true, and now people must put more thought into it.
* YICPM is a collaboration of the Council of Juvenile Justice Administrators and the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform.*
