Does Race or Ethnicity Play a role in Juvenile Sentencing?

During a tour of the Laramie County Juvenile Services Center with Tim Thorson and Captain Michael Sorensen I observed some trends that were further supported by data provided by the JSC.

Through Mr. Thorson and Captain Sorensen I received a hard copy of the Overview of Laramie County Juvenile Services Center for fiscal year 2013¹ which provided the following details of operation:

• The Laramie County Juvenile Services Center began operation on July 1, 2012
• Laramie County officials indicate that the cost of opening the JSC was $7.1 million of which the building contractor, Adolfson & Peterson Construction indicates $5.6 million was in construction alone
• The facility was designed to house 24 juveniles at one time although to date only 16 beds are available²
• Over the course of FY 2013 more than 150 juveniles were incarcerated in the JSC making the facility one of Wyoming's largest lock-and-key juvenile incarceration facilities
• The JSC houses incarcerated juveniles between ages 11 and 17 from Laramie and other counties
• The JSC uses the Wyoming Juvenile Risk Assessment (JDRA) on every juvenile considered for incarceration at the facility

Despite being named a "Service Center" the JSC is, quite simply, a jail. The children incarcerated there have individual "rooms" each of which has locks on the outside—in other words, a cell. In fact, every door in the facility has a lock to allow for containment within any section of the facility. Five individual cells form a wing and the wings are loosely gender segregated. Two wings form a pod and the pods are coed. Each pod shares a common dayroom, although showers and bathroom facilities are separate for each wing.

Many of the juvenile offenders that I saw appeared to be ethnic minorities, mostly Hispanic and Native American. Because the Wyoming State Advisory Council claims to have attained compliance with the disproportionate minority contact mandate, I was surprised at my observations and determined to find out more.

Through Mr. Thorson and Captain Sorensen I received incarceration data sheets for the entire calendar year of 2013. This is raw data that provides individual information on a detainee's risk assessment score, gender, ethnicity or race, age, offense, adjudication information, length of stay, disposition and release status. A preliminary review of the data produced the following:

Based on current census data, there should be approximately 75 percent white kids incarcerated; 18 percent Hispanic kids incarcerated; 4% black kids incarcerated and 1% Native American Kids incarcerated. The remaining 1.1 percent of teenagers in Laramie County are Asian although none are reflected in JSC incarceration data. As the above chart clearly shows, the racial distribution for juveniles incarcerated at the JSC is quite dissimilar to the population. If the elimination of disproportionate minority contact within the juvenile justice system has truly been achieved, the racial breakdown of incarcerated juveniles should does not reflect this accomplishment. It is not clear if this disparity is a result of disproportionate minority contact with law enforcement or a sentencing disparity. The cause of the disparity may become clear when we analyze additional data from the JSC as it becomes available.

¹ Thus far, we have been unable to locate an online source for this report.

² That comes to a planned cost of $296,833 per bed, but an actual cost of $443,750 per bed based on occupancy. This, of course, does not include operating costs.