Cumulative Disadvantage as an Explanation for Observed Disproportionality within the Juvenile Justice System: An Empirical Test

ABSTRACT A number of scholars have attempted to explain disproportionality within the juvenile justice system as a function of cumulative disadvantage. This empirical test of the cumulative disadvantage hypothesis suggests that minorities tend to be most disadvantaged at stages in the process where confinement decisions are made (detention, commitment). Thus, while disadvantage does not appear to aggregate consistently and unidirectionally as the child moves through the system, there is some evidence that disadvantage does aggregate between the detention and adjudication stages, once controls from legal differences are imposed.