This release of racial and ethnic disproportionality indicator data is intended to help Washington State's juvenile courts identify where in the juvenile justice system- from arrest to sentencing-disproportionate minority contact (DMC) occurs. Disproportionate minority contact is a disparity between any race or ethnic group's representation in the justice system relative to the general population.

State- and court-level five-year averages (2007-2011) are presented by DMC indicator for a total of eight tables. If courts have fewer than ten youth in any category, the output is not reported. This is done to prevent misleading results due to small numbers.

The tables were produced by the Washington State Center for Court Research and the National Center for Juvenile Justice. The publication of these tables is the Administrative Office of the Courts first statewide attempt at identifying areas of disproportionality in the juvenile justice system. **It is important to note that this initial data release is intended to be viewed as a starting point from which to improve our data collection methods and capabilities for future review. It is possible that some of this data will not coincide exactly with similar data from other sources, and this should be considered when reviewing these tables.**

Using data to identify areas of racial disproportionality can inform community-focused discussions exploring causes for these disparities and resulting in the development of data-driven solutions that are equitable for all. The intent is for this information to be provided on an annual basis. Improved reporting of racial and ethnic data is necessary to increase the accuracy of these measures. An important step toward having usable, reliable data is to reduce the number of court records for which there is missing information about race and ethnicity. Continued reporting of DMC data and the accountability it brings will increase the odds of achieving lasting and meaningful improvements to reduce-and eventually eliminate-racial and ethnic disproportionality in the juvenile justice system.

Improving the utility of this data over time is a statewide goal requiring a combined effort and open communication; please contact us with your comments and suggestions.

Juvenile DMC Tracking Update - January 2013

Content

• Why are these RRIs important?
• What is a Relative Rate Index and how do you calculate it?
• Where did you get the data for the tables?
• Is the data reliable?
• Additional Resources

Why are these RRIs important to me?

Relative Rate Indices (RRIs) are calculated to demonstrate the scope and magnitude of the overrepresentation of youth of color in the juvenile justice system.

Overrepresentation and disproportionate minority contact (DMC) refer to the same concept, that a greater proportion of youth of color are involved in the system than would be expected based on the proportion of the group in the general population. An example of overrepresentation: Black youth may make up 12% of the population in one county, yet make up 35% of the referrals to juvenile court.

RRIs suggest to administrators and program managers areas where potential revisions to policy or practice could be implemented that would make the system more equitable for all youth. They also indicate where further investigation of justice system process might be warranted.

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What is a Relative Rate Index and how do you calculate it?

The RRI compares rates of contact. For example, the population-based rate of minority contact with the system is the number of contacts divided by the population for a specific minority group. A similar rate is calculated for White youth. The minority rate is then divided by the White rate, which results in a number. If the number is less than 1, then the minority group has a lesser chance of contact with the juvenile justice system than White youth, and if it is greater than 1, there is a greater chance that minority youth will come in contact with the justice system. For example, an RRI of 2.5 is interpreted to mean that members of a particular minority group come in contact with the juvenile justice system two and one-half times more often than White youth. Conversely, a RRI of 0.4 means that members of this minority group comes in contact with the juvenile justice system two and one-half times less often than White youth. It is important to note that values less than 1 are interpreted at 1 divided by the RRI value.

For example, in 2011 the RRI for diversion agreements for all minority youth was 0.78. This is interpreted that compared to White youth, youth of color are 28% less likely (1 / 0.78 = 1.28) to have a diversion agreement.

The relative rate index is a commonly used metric nationally. RRIs are designed to be comparable across sites, no matter the size of the jurisdiction, similar to the way percentages are used. The RRI is represented as a number, and is calculated for each minority group (Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian/Alaska Native, Black and Hispanic). Figure1 represents the calculation visually.

For the tables presented here, RRIs are calculated at eight standard decision points in the system in order to identify places where overrepresentation may occur:

1. Arrest
2. Referral to Court
3. Referrals with an offense category of B+ or higher
4. Referrals with a diversion agreement
5. Petitioned referrals
6. Adjudicated cases
7. Adjudicated cases with a JRA disposition
8. Cases waived to adult court

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Where did you get the data for the tables?

Arrest data was requested from the Washington Association of Police Chiefs and Sheriff's (WASPC). All other data were extracted from Washington State's Judicial Information System (JIS) data warehouse.

Currently, the Center is unable to get consistent data on detention. Because overrepresentation in detention is the reason that DMC became a national issue and the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) came to be, it is particularly important to the Center to build the detention data warehouse in JCS. An effort to work with the courts to improve the availability and quality of detention data is underway.

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Is the data reliable?

There is room for improvement in data quality. There are some fundamental problems with the way that race and ethnicity data is collected in the state system, and there are large portions of data (particularly ethnicity data) that are coded "unknown", which means we are only reporting on a subset of the possible population of youth of color. Analysis the Center has conducted on the court records designed to identify mis-coded Hispanic youth suggest that approximately 10% of youth who are classified as unknown ethnicity should indeed be coded as Hispanic.

The RRI tables presented here mark the first step in identifying the scope and magnitude of DMC in Washington's courts. The Center plans to provide additional information about steps in the process that are not usually included in the national data, and to implement statistical controls so that offending history and severity of offense are taken into account when comparing youth.

The Center has developed a Best Practice document for courts to inform data collection practices, and is working with the Superior Court Judges Association and the Washington Juvenile Court Administrators to adapt the proposed best practices to fit the information needs of Washington's courts. The Center is working with AOC Information Services staff to prepare monthly BOXI reports that will assist court-level data managers to identify records with missing race-ethnicity codes so that records can be cleaned. A training webinar will be developed to assist in training staff doing data entry. Additionally, the Center is working with the courts and the Information Technology Governance process to improve the way race and ethnicity data are collected, by adding race codes permitting youth to self-identify as multi-racial. Taken together, these steps should lead to a better ability of courts to analyze and understand racial and ethnic disproportionality.

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Additional Resources on the Relative Rate Index:

Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Implementing the Relative Rate Index Calculation.
http://www.ojjdp.gov/dmc/pdf/StepsinCalculatingtheRelativeRateIndex.pdf

Feyerherm, Snyder & Villarruel. Identification and Monitoring.
https://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/dmc_ta_manual/dmcch1.pdf

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Below are links to tables containing DMC RRI 5-year averages for Washington State and individual counties for eight decision points in the juvenile justice process.

1. Juvenile Arrests
2. Referrals to Juvenile Court
3. Referrals with a Disposition Offense Category B+ or Higher
4. Referrals with a Diversion Agreement Signed
5. Cases Filed (petitioned referrals)
6. Cases Adjudicated (guilty and deferred dispositions)
7. Adjudicated with JRA Dispositions
8. Cases Transferred to Adult Court

Missing data on race and/or ethnicity occurs throughout the records used here. Depending on the decision point, approximately 40% of all cases were missing an indicator of ethnicity (whether the youth was Hispanic/Latino) and an additional 5% of cases had no indicator of either race or ethnicity.

The seven tables at the link below present each county's missing race and/or ethnicity data by the decision points associated with the courts, ranging from referral to transfer to the adult system. The second to last column, "Known Race/Missing Ethnicity" provides the proportion of cases with a racial category indicated but no indicator of ethnicity. For all calculations, these cases were counted under the identified racial group (i.e. assumed to be non-Hispanic). The final column, "Missing" provides the proportion of cases where both race and ethnicity were missing from the record. These cases were omitted from analysis.

Missing Proportions Tables

Contents

• Methods
• Data Source and Definitions
• Assumptions and Broad Logic
• Court Code Definitions

Methods

Systematic Missing Data

The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) supplies the arrest data used in the analysis; currently, data from law enforcement does not contain information on ethnicity. Because of this, no RRIs are calculated for Hispanic/Latino youth. When calculating RRIs for arrests, youth who are identified as Hispanic/Latino in the base population (juvenile population based on US Census numbers) are counted in the racial group with which they identified. While the exact proportion of Hispanic/Latino youth who are counted in each of the racial categories for arrest data is unknown, it is likely that a large proportion of youth who would, if given the chance, self-identify as Hispanic/Latino are reported as White. Being the referent group in RRI calculations, the probable inflation of the White population numbers likely results in an underestimation of the actual values of the arrest RRI numbers for the other minority populations.

All Other Missing Data

Missing data on race and/or ethnicity occurs throughout the records used here. Depending on the decision point, approximately 40% of all cases were missing an indicator of ethnicity (whether the youth was Hispanic/Latino) and an additional 5% of cases had no indicator of either race or ethnicity.

The 5% of youth missing information on race and ethnicity were omitted from the calculations.

For the RRI calculations, youth with a reported race but missing ethnicity are categorized as non-Hispanic/Latino. While this likely results in a mis-categorization of some Hispanic/Latino youth-using the US Census Hispanic surname file we identified that approximately 10% of youth with missing ethnicity are Hispanic/Latino-it is significantly better than omitting all youth with missing ethnicity from analysis or assuming that the rate of known ethnicity accurately reflects the overall proportion of Hispanic/Latino youth.

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Data Source and Definitions

The majority of data used in these calculations is entered by court personnel in the Juvenile and Corrections System database. Below is a list of data sources, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and any additional notes of interest.

Source: US Census Bureau and National Center for Health Statistics. "Easy Access to Juvenile Populations."
http://ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezapop
Definition: Population of youth age 10-17 in geographically defined areas

Source: Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs
Definition: Arrests for all criminal offenses for individuals under the age of 18
Notes: WASPC does not collect ethnicity data

Source: Washington Administrative Office of the Courts, Juvenile and Corrections System (JCS) database
Definition: Referrals to juvenile court from law enforcement

Source: Washington Administrative Office of the Courts, Juvenile and Corrections System (JCS) database
Definition: Codes with B+ or higher on the juvenile offender sentencing grid indicate confinement, regardless of prior adjudications

Source: Washington Administrative Office of the Courts, Juvenile and Corrections System (JCS) database
Definition: Cases in which a diversion agreement is signed

Source: Washington Administrative Office of the Courts, Juvenile and Corrections System (JCS) database
Definition: Cases adjudicated guilty

Source: Washington Administrative Office of the Courts, Juvenile and Corrections System (JCS) database
Definition: Cases that result in a JRA disposition, either local or detention
Notes: In counties where JRA facilities are/were located (Lewis, King, Thurston, and Pacific/Wahkiakum) the RRIs are higher because technical recommits on youth in the facility (regardless of their county of origin) are credited to the county where they reside

Source: Washington Administrative Office of the Courts, Judicial Information System (JIS). Includes district, municipal and some superior court information
Definition: Adult criminal cases with defendants under 18 at case filing

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Assumptions and Broad Logic:

1. AO referrals (Administrative Offenders) have been excluded because they are duplicative of actual JO referrals in other counties.
2. Queries did not limit on date of filing (or date of conviction). They counted the number of events per year (such as filings per year or the number of convictions each year regardless of filing date) in order to get a measure of court workload and number of cases processed.
3. The Adjudicated Cases query reported only the Guilty and Deferred Disposition cases in order to align with the national standards.
4. Juvenile cases transferred to adult court were selected from adult criminal cases with defendants under age 18 at case filing.
5. The Diversions query limited cases to those with diversion agreements signed (like a confirmed diversion event), rather than cases eligible for a diversions.

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Court Code Definitions

Stage	Codes	Limits From Query	Filters
Population	--	--	--
Arrest	--	--	--
Referral to Juvenile Court		Referral Type Code= JI, JO, Referral Date-Year = Year of inquiry, Specific Primary Participant Flag = Y
Referrals with JDO code		Referral Type Code= JI, JO, Referral Date-Year = Year of inquiry, Specific Primary Participant Flag = Y	Filter applied: Primary Reason JDO (CAT) Code In List: A, A-, A+, B+
Diversion agreement signed	Referral disposition code: DAS, CWR, DASSX	Referral Type Code= JI, JO, Referral Date-Year = Year of inquiry, Specific Primary Participant Flag = Y Referral Disposition Code: In list
Petitioned referrals (case filed)		Specific Primary Participant Flag = Y Case Type Code: 08 Case File Date-Year= Year of inquiry,	Filter applied: Primary Reason JDO (CAT) Code In List: A, A-, A+, B+
Adjudicated cases	Guilty: CVCT, GP, GPAT Deferred: CTOP, DDSP Not Guilty: AQCT, DSCT, DSM, DAT NO REPORT: UNDS, STCL, DECL, CHV	Specific Primary Participant Flag = Y Case Type Code: 08 Specific Participant Type Code In List: DEF Case Resolution Date Between Case Resolution Date (Start) and Case Resolution Date (End)	Filter applied: Case Resolution Code In List: CTOP, DDSP, CVCT, GP, GPAT
Adjudicated cases with JRA	Case Condition Codes: CDJ, JRL, SUR, DCR	Specific Primary Participant Flag = Y Specific Participant Type Code In List: DEF Case Disposition Date-Year = year of inquiry
Cases transferred to adult court	All criminal codes	Date of Case Filing - DOB <= 18 years of age

Suggested Citation:

Puzzanchera, C., Hurst, H., Zipoy, J., and Veele, S. (2012). Washington DMC Databook: 2005-2012. Developed by the National Center for Juvenile Justice with the Washington State Center for Court Research.

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