Local News

Report: Black youth in Mass. four times more likely to be physically arrested for an alleged offense compared to white peers

“These early disparities matter.”

November 7, 2022

2 minutes to read

Black youth in Massachusetts are over four times more likely to be physically arrested by police, versus receiving a court summons for an alleged offense, compared to their white peers, according to a recent report by the state’s Juvenile Justice Police and Data Board. Latino youth, meanwhile, were almost three times more likely to be physically arrested compared to white youth.

The report authors noted that while the number of young people moving through the state’s juvenile justice system has gone down “substantially” in the past four years — the result of statutory and agency-led reforms — the disparities for the number of young people of color coming into contact with the system remains “stubbornly high overall.”

According to the report, between 2017 and 2021 there was a 50 percent decline in applications for complaint, but that drop has not reversed the troubling racial disparities seen in the system.

The report suggested that in order to reduce disparities in and out of the juvenile justice system, the state must focus on reducing the disproportionate way that young people come into contact with the system — whether an individual is physically arrested (a “custodial” arrest) or brought in through a court summons for an alleged offense.

“The disparities are largest at the ‘front door’ of the system— the arrest and application for delinquency complaint stage,” the report notes. “These early disparities matter. Although Massachusetts has significantly increased efforts in recent years to divert more and more youth who enter the Juvenile Court system from progressing further within that system, the initial contact with police and with the Court system can still have harmful effects, which can last throughout their adolescence and into adulthood.”

So far, despite efforts in Massachusetts to rely on a court summons for an alleged offense, there remains disparate use of physical arrests for Black and Latino youth in the state, the report found.

In Massachusetts, 64 percent of youth (ages 12 to 17) are white, while 18 percent are Latino, and 10 percent are Black. Even though they make up 64 percent of the 12- to 17-year-old population in the state, white youth made up just 35 percent of physical arrests for alleged offenses in 2021.

Black young people make up 23 percent of physical arrests, while Latino youth make up 28 percent of the physical arrests.

“What we’re seeing is that Black kids are more likely to be arrested than issued a summons, despite the fact that the law prefers summons as a method,” Leon Smith, executive director of Citizens for Juvenile Justice, which participated in the Juvenile Justice Policy and Data Board, told GBH.

The report authors wrote that there is no single reason for the disparities in the juvenile justice system, but instead, a combination of factors that stem from both societal components and differences in the way that young people of color are treated.

The report included a handful of recommendations, ranging from steps for investing in the prevention of and alternatives to physical arrests, to gathering more data to identify “problem areas” and make improvements, to policy changes.

According to the GBH, the report from the board, which was released on Nov. 1, was mandated by a state criminal reform bill approved in 2018.