Equity – Breaking the Rules

Reasons to Question, Questions to Ask: How Do Your Probation Condition and Enforcement Strategies Promote or Hinder System Equity?

This section of the toolkit can help you assess whether your current approaches to juvenile probation conditions and enforcement effectively promote youth behavior change, youth and system accountability, and system equity. We recommend you start by watching the video. Then review the reasons and questions to assess your current policies and practices and begin to identify opportunities for improvement.

Reasons to Question. Questions to Ask.

Click through the information to individually and collectively assess your current policies and practices and begin to identify opportunities for improvement in these areas:

Supervision Equity
Service Equity

Supervision Equity

Standardized conditions are not standardized in practice if youth’s ability to comply with those conditions is highly dependent on their external circumstances and resources, such as school quality and safety, transportation, access to services in their community, and family supports.
Additionally, youth of color are often subject to a greater number of conditions, as well as more punitive and less “positive” conditions than their White peers, such as increased drug testing requirements and decreased access to restorative justice opportunities.¹
Research shows that noncompliance with stricter conditions, particularly drug testing and daily school attendance, most frequently lead to violations and out-of-home placement.²
Youth of color are often viewed as less remorseful and more individually culpable—as opposed to acting because of external factors—than their White peers.³
Research shows that how service providers, officers, and judges frame the reasons for youth’s behavior in progress reports and review hearings has a significant influence on their decisions.⁴
Black youth are three times more likely to be incarcerated in state custody for a technical violation than White youth.⁵

Supervision Equity

Do you have standardized probation conditions? If so, are all youth equally able to comply with these conditions given their homes, schools, communities, and resources and supports?
To what extent do your probation conditions differ in practice for youth at similar risk levels of varying races, ethnicities, genders, and orientations? Is this something you measure and track?
How, if at all, do you account for racial and other types of bias in the way probation conditions are monitored and enforced by probation officers and judges?
Do probation officers and judges receive required training in implicit and explicit bias, including how such bias might impact perceptions of youth’s behavior and corresponding court actions?
How do you ensure that court reports and progress review hearings accurately reflect the full context of youth’s behavior and ensure that youth and families participate and have a valued voice?
Are youth of color more likely to receive technical violations and placement than their White peers for similar behavior? How do you measure and monitor this potential concern?

Service Equity

Compared to their White peers, youth of color may reside in communities with fewer services and prosocial activities, making it harder to comply with conditions and their case plan.⁶
Youth of color may also face more practical barriers to service access such as a lack of transportation, private insurance, and safety concerns (e.g., gang boundaries).⁷
Research shows that youth of color are less likely to be referred for treatment-oriented or strength-based services than their White peers.⁸
Many evidence-based programs are not well tested for youth of color; likewise, few systems train providers on cultural competence or institute requirements or supports for providers to align the demographics of their workforce with that of their clients.

Service Equity

To what extent is compliance with your probation conditions, and the goals of probation more generally, dependent upon youth’s access to appropriate and high-quality services?
What access barriers exist to services for youth of color, how are these barriers factored into youth’s condition compliance, and how are providers and officers held accountable accordingly?
Compared to their White peers with a similar risk of reoffending, are youth of color referred to services at the same rate? The same type of services? Do they have similar outcomes?
To what extent are you partnering with communities and leaders of color to expand and align local service systems to effectively address the needs of youth of color on probation?

¹ Michael Leiber and Jennifer Peck, “Probation violations and juvenile justice decision making: Implications for Blacks and Hispanics,” Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 11 (2013): 60–78, doi:10.1177/1541204012447960; Ryken Grattet, Jeffrey Lin, and Joan Petersilia, “Supervision regimes, risk, and official reactions to parolee deviance,” Criminology 49, no. 2 (2011): 371–399, doi:10.1111/j.1745-9125.2011.00229.x.

² Amanda NeMoyer et al., “Predicting Probation Revocation and Residential Facility Placement at Juvenile Probation Review Hearings: Youth-Specific and Hearing-Specific Factors,” Law and Human Behavior 40, no. 1 (2016): 97–105.

³ Laura Beckman and Nancy Rodriguez, “Race, Ethnicity, and Official Perceptions in the Juvenile Justice System: Extending the Role of Negative Attributional Stereotypes,” Criminal Justice and Behavior 48, no. 11 (2021): 1536–1556, doi:10.1177/00938548211004672; George Bridges and Sara Steen, “Racial Disparities in Official Assessments of Juvenile Offenders: Attributional Stereotypes as Mediating Mechanisms,” American Sociological Review 63, no. 4 (1998): 554–570; Susan Bandes, “Remorse and Criminal Justice,” Emotion Review 8, no. 1 (2016): 14–19, doi:10.1177/1754073915601222.

⁴ Elizabeth Gale-Bentz et al., “Impact of community-based provider reports on juvenile probation officers’ recommendations: Effects of positive and negative framing on decision making,” Law and Human Behavior 43, no.2 (2019): 193–204, https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000321.

⁵ Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Easy Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement (Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2019), https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezacjrp/.

⁶ Marla McDaniel et al., Identifying Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Human Services (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2017), https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/94986/identifying-racial-and-ethnic-disparities-in-human-services_1.pdf.

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Elizabeth Spinney et al., “Racial disparities in referrals to mental health and substance abuse services from the juvenile justice system: A review of the literature,” Journal of Crime and Justice 39, no. 1 (2017): 153–173; Margarita Alegria et al., “Disparities in treatment for substance use disorders and co-occurring disorders for ethnic/racial minority youth,” Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 50, no. 1 (2011): 22–31.

You just explored Reasons to Question, Questions to Ask—Equity. Be sure to engage with the other modules. Next is Solutions to Explore—Condition Setting.

Right now, you are exploring Reasons to Question, Questions to Ask—Equity. Be sure to watch the video, review the information, and engage with the other modules. Next is Solutions to Explore—Condition Setting.