Addressing Structural Racism in Juvenile Justice Through Experimentalism

Anti-discrimination legal efforts are evolving in an effort to address pervasive racism that continues to infect our social institutions. With our society transitioning away from the acceptance of "first generation" (i.e. overt and deliberate) racism, we still have to contend with "second generation" racism that exists in the structures of social programs, such as juvenile detention. Structural racism involves social practices and patterns of interaction that are harder to target with rule-based adjudication or command and control legislation. There is an emerging movement toward a more experimentalist approach, which induces actors to engage in investigation, information sharing, and deliberation to address complex problems. This Note explores the efforts of an experimentalist juvenile justice regime known as the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), which was created in response to innovative amendments to the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA). Specifically, this Note measures JDAI's progress in addressing disproportionate minority contact in juvenile justice through the lens of New Jersey, JDAI's first statewide model jurisdiction. Lastly, the Note evaluates whether lessons from experimentalist responses to workplace discrimination and child welfare reform can be applied to the juvenile detention context. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]