Racial Justice and Indiana’s Children in Court

By Julie Whitman, Executive Director | Commission on Improving the Status of Children in Indiana

Children in the court system—whether through juvenile justice or child welfare—must be treated equitably. Children, individuals, and families of color have at times been treated more harshly and punished more severely than their white counterparts. It is a fact, and it must stop. —Chief Justice Loretta Rush, Statement on Race and Equity, June 5, 2020

According to data collected and reported by each county, Black youth in Indiana are more likely than white youth to be referred to juvenile probation, detained pretrial, placed in secure confinement, and transferred to adult court. Hispanic youth consistently have the second-highest rate of contact with the juvenile justice system at each of these decision points after Black youth.
Similar disparities appear in the child welfare system. According to data from the Department of Child Services, black individuals are:

• 5x – 2x more likely to have a report called in to the hotline
• More likely to have an assessment than white peers
• More likely to have a CHINS case than white peers
• More likely to be placed with a stranger in foster care
• 5x more likely to be placed in a residential setting and stay longer
• 2x as likely to “age out” of the system without legal connections to family
• Spend more time in care to reach adoption than white peers

We know from decades of research that having contact with either the juvenile justice or child welfare system increases the likelihood that a child will experience negative outcomes in adulthood, and prolonged contact with either system—including “aging out” of foster care—can have serious negative consequences for a child’s future. While the purpose of our juvenile courts is clear—to keep children safe and to correct delinquent behavior—what is much less clear is whether our system is achieving its intended outcomes consistently, especially when it comes to youth and families of color.

How Did We Get Here?

When we examine our history, it becomes clear that the consistent disparities we see are not coincidental but are part of a repeating pattern. In the context of child welfare, we know that separation of non-white families is as old as this country: black children were sold away from their parents during slavery, American Indian children were taken and raised by white families or sent to boarding schools to stamp out their native culture.
Our history of disparate treatment of children in the delinquency system is equally bleak. Beginning with the “Black Codes” that criminalized such behavior as idleness and enforced unpaid “apprenticeships” of black youth to their former slave masters, and continuing through the development of the juvenile justice system—which initially only treated white children as children—America’s history with the criminalization of black youth is well-documented.
There is no denying that our government created systems that exalted the white family and denigrated families of color. Data reveals that our systems are still delivering unequal treatment. But the wrongs of the past can be addressed by government proactively correcting problems.

Justice is what love looks like in public.
-Dr. Cornell West

Current Efforts

Acknowledging the patterns of our history does not negate the fact that individual cases of abuse, neglect, and delinquency do occur in families of color. The patterns need to be acknowledged so that we can work to ensure that all families that come in contact with our courts and government systems are treated with fairness and dignity.
Fortunately, our systems are in fact working toward solutions. Within DCS, a Racial Justice, Equity, and Inclusion Advisory Council was formed, which includes a steering committee consisting of DCS executives, a juvenile judge, a residential provider, and an older foster youth. Under the leadership of this group, DCS added racial justice, diversity, and inclusion to its stated agency values, which also include respect for all, a culture of safety, and a commitment to continuous improvement. To ensure these values are put into practice, DCS created work groups tasked with developing specific recommendations in six areas:

• Hiring and employee relations
• Culture and climate
• Private and public partnerships
• Services and resources
• Training and professional development
• Policy and practice

All six groups include youth with child welfare system experience, who also have their own separate group to safely process what they are learning and their contributions to improving the agency’s actions toward racial justice, equity, and inclusion.
Evidence of progress in the child welfare system can be seen in Marion County with Child Advocates, the local CASA agency. For several years, Child Advocates has been explicitly taking on racism and its impact in the child welfare system through workshops for DCS employees, CASA volunteers, and other members of the community. The agency recently revamped its workshop to have a more explicit focus on Indiana’s history of racism and its impact specifically on children. Child Advocates is looking for ways to replicate this workshop model throughout the state.
On the delinquency side, the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative is working closely with 38 counties to improve outcomes for youth in the delinquency system while protecting public safety. Some of JDAI’s core strategies include the use of data, collaboration, and a commitment to reducing racial, ethnic, and gender disparities. JDAI counties routinely track and analyze data disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and gender. This practice is one way sites are working to center race equity. It allows them to hold themselves accountable as they work to improve outcomes for all youth.
JDAI has seen positive results over the past decade in reducing the number of youths admitted to secure detention across all racial groups. However, the rate of admissions for some youth of color remains nearly unchanged—with black youth almost four times as likely as their white counterparts to be admitted to secure detention. The disparities remain stubbornly in place despite fewer youths of all races being detained. In response, a small group of counties, through the Race Equity and Inclusion Lead County Project, have committed to being more intentional with their race equity efforts. These counties are engaging in training, education, and facilitated discussions in an effort to normalize conversations about race. They are also using a data driven process to make policy and practice changes and tools such as racial impact assessments to determine the impact of existing or new policies and practices on different groups of young people.

The Role of Judges

There are several actions that judges can take to help improve the equitable administration of justice in courts and systems, especially as they impact children and families:

1. Consider becoming a JDAI county. JDAI staff at the Indiana Office of Court Services will introduce you to a data-driven method of collaborating for system improvement and will provide support and facilitate peer learning opportunities with other counties who are engaged in the effort and seeing positive results.
2. Look at your data, disaggregated and over time. To understand the level of disparate outcomes for your own county, request and review data on both delinquency and CHINS cases broken down by race, ethnicity, and gender. Track trends over time. Then work with your staff and partners to set goals and be intentional about reducing the disparate outcomes of court involvement for families in your community.
3. Give special consideration to those decisions where there is a fair amount of subjectivity. The job of a judicial officer is to apply the law, and judges do so every day in their courtrooms. However, at each point of the process, judges and those who act on behalf of the state—family case managers, DCS attorneys, probation officers, police—have some amount of discretion in how they apply that law. Consider the decision points where there is the most room for subjectivity and see if there are indicators of favoring one group of families and youth over another.
4. Examine your own biases and seek out implicit bias training for your staff and partners. The existence of bias is not a matter of blame or shame; it is a matter of culture and conditioning—to which every human is subject. We all have biases. Nearly all biased thinking occurs “below the surface” in our subconscious, but its effects can be seen in our words and actions. Taking the time to become aware of our own biases allows us to work intentionally to mitigate and eventually eradicate them.
5. Take advantage of judicial education opportunities. The Indiana Office of Court Services, the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, and other groups offer high-quality judicial education on many topics, including racial equity and the judge’s role in it. One silver lining of the current pandemic is that many educational opportunities are available for free online.
6. Ask employees and families of color their honest perceptions of and experience with the system, listen, be willing to learn, and act. All day long on the bench, judges are listening. They are listening for the facts of the case and for information that will help them make the right determinations about how to apply the law and get to a just outcome. Invest some time in a different type of listening—outside of the courtroom, find ways to ask youth and families of color, as well as your own staff, about their experiences with bias and racism. Commit to listening with an open mind and determine where you have the power to take corrective or preventive actions.
7. Foster a culture of inclusion and have open conversations with staff and court stakeholders. Culture starts from the top, and judges are leaders both within their courts and within their communities. Consider the culture and climate of your court and community. What can you do to intentionally drive toward inclusivity? There is a saying that “diversity is being allowed at the party; inclusion is being asked to dance.” Work at actively including those who may not have the courage to speak up because their background differs from that of the people who hold power.

Chief Justice Rush’s June 2020 statement on race and equity is a call we must continue to embrace: “We must listen to and learn from the experiences of our communities who are too often unheard. Heeding their voices will give us the wisdom we need to correct the entrenched disparities that still divide us.” As the Chief Justice made clear, we can and must do better.

For more information, please contact the author at 317-232-1945 or [email protected].
Read more about the work of the Commission