Work needed to get minorities offenders into diversion programs, specialty courts, officials say

AOC officials testified Wednesday before the legislative Commission on Race and Access to Opportunity about minority access to diversion and access to specialty courts such as Drug Court.

Senate Bill 200 focused on reducing the number of low-level juveniles charged with “public” criminal offenses, and “status offenders,” from being sent to juvenile detention centers. A status offense is an offense that only applies to juveniles, such as running away from home or truancy from school, while a public offense is a crime such as theft, robbery and assault.

Laurie Dudgeon, administrator for the Administrative Office of the Courts, said, “our reform efforts were particularly effective for white kids and were less effective for our kids of color.”

According to AOC statistics provided to the committee, Black juveniles make up 11% of the state’s juvenile population, while whites make up 80% of the juvenile population.

The AOC found Black juveniles were almost as likely to be sent to a detention facility upon being charged with an offense as a white juvenile and were more likely to be considered eligible to be charged as adults for public offenses.

AOC statistics say 38% of Black juveniles charged with an offense were incarcerated upon being charged in Fiscal Year 2020-21, compared to 49 of white juveniles.

Also, 57% of Black juveniles charged with a public offense were deemed eligible to be transferred out of juvenile court and tried as an adult, compared to only 39% of whites charged with a public offense. Not all of those offenders necessarily ended up being charged as an adult, AOC statistics say.

Twenty-eight percent of Black juveniles who could have been diverted from the court system into an alternative plan were instead sent to court by a county attorney or judge, AOC statistics said.

Rachel Bingham, director of statewide programs for the AOC, said the agency has been compiling data on how minorities are handled by the courts.

“It has been an opportunity to dig deeper and look at where racial disparities” are, she said.

Last year, the AOC created a plan for court officials to identify areas where Black and minority people are treated differently than others in the court system, with the goal of reducing disparities in treatment.

The plan, which is being implemented at all levels of the court system, focuses on identifying how minorities are treated at every decision point in the court process and looking at how decisions made by officials can have negative impacts on racial and ethnic minorities.

Dudgeon said data has shown Black and other minority offenders are referred and enrolled less often than whites in specialty courts, such as Drug Court and Mental Health Court. Those programs are geared toward keeping a person out of jail by keeping them on a treatment plan.

Minority underrepresentation in specialty courts “is something that is happening with specialty courts across the country,” Dudgeon said. But some eligible offenders don’t want to be placed in a program like Drug Court because the programs are long compared to a sentence for a drug offense, Dudgeon said.

“You have to be able to make (specialty courts) available and accessible” to minority defendants, Bingham said. “It has to be a better option” than a jail sentence.

James Mayse, 270-691-7303, jmayse@messenger-inquirer.com, Twitter: @JamesMayse