Meeting the Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Mandate: Lessons from State Assessments of Minority Overrepresentation and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Juvenile Justice Systems

Effective as of October 2019, the Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Mandate requires states to address racial/ethnic disparities in their juvenile justice systems without reference to any numerical standards or a definition of disparity in empirical terms. Standards for assessing disproportionate minority contact have also gotten looser, as the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) announced that states should evaluate DMC problems and interventions based on their own metrics of success. Understanding how states have examined minority overrepresentation and disparities in their systems in the past helps to structure what states might do in terms of DMC assessment in the near future. This study analyzes 39 state assessments on behalf of the DMC mandate from 1992 to 2019. A content analysis locates patterns in methods, racial/ethnic categories, decision-making stages, geographic coverage, and recommendations for future reform efforts. Frequent use of multivariate methods and qualitative techniques, such as surveys, focus groups, and interviews, suggests that assessments are empirically rich. Most assessments likewise contain directions for reform initiatives and analysis in subsequent DMC reports. Lessons are drawn for designing robust DMC assessments for states and illuminating racial/ethnic disparities in juvenile processing ahead.