Disproportionate minority arrests (DMA) of youth: A Colorado study of police perspectives on race and arrest decision making

This dissertation examines the overrepresentation of minority youth in juvenile arrests. The study employed a qualitative multiple case design with one-shot data collection in four different areas of Colorado. The study design reflected the collaborative social research aims of the project. Members of a coalition organized to address the federal Disproportionate Minority Confinement mandate were instrumental in the identification of research questions, study design, instrumentation, and participant recruitment. Data were collected through a combined focus group and survey study in each of the four areas of the state. The dissertation explores the police organizational perspective, or “police theory of office,” that emerged from the data, specifically in regards to police occupational concerns in juvenile encounters, working deviant typologies, and the organizational rationale for arrest outcomes. The dissertation explores the potential of this concept for understanding how race-ethnicity might indirectly impact police arrests through the organization of police work and operating theory of office. The research draws upon racial formation theory to account for the socially constructed nature of race and the racial signification of social phenomena. The dissertation concludes that the theory of office and racialization are useful concepts in examining the problem of disproportionate minority arrests, explaining ways in which the typology of the “hard core” delinquent may mediate the effects of race on police arrest and custody decisions. This study begins to address the empirical and theoretical gaps in our understanding of police decision making and the systemic processes that may routinize racial-ethnic bias in juvenile justice. The study, however, is exploratory. Additional work is needed in the area of understanding the relationship between racial-ethnic minority “profiles” and the police typology of the “hard core criminal.”...