Article Analysis Essay on Reducing Disproportionate Minority Contact in the Juvenile Justice System

Summary

The article addresses the issue of disproportionate confinement of minority youths through the American justice system, citing data from the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act to illustrate that there exists a disproportionate minority contact with law enforcement. According to Cabaniss, Frabutt, Kendrick, and Arbuckle (2007), little progress has been made to reduce the disproportion in the arrest, arraignment, and confinement of minorities despite national, state, and local government efforts. Cabaniss et al. (2007) stated that challenges to eliminating Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) stem from the isolated efforts of various stakeholders in solving what is, in fact, a multi-faceted problem.

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In the literature review, the authors explored studies that indicated that DMC is a dynamic social concern that tends to evolve and resist changes in the social strata. The authors observed that admitting to DMC raises distressing points to communities that perceive themselves as being inclusive and non-discriminatory. Organizations like the Building Blocks for Youth have made some of the first steps in bringing together various stakeholders in the discussion of ways in which America can curb DMC conclusively. It is on this premise of the efforts of Building Blocks for Youth that the article is based (Cabaniss et al., 2007). The finding, at the end of the paper, is that solutions to disproportionate minority contact lay with the communities more than with government policies.

Strengths

The main strength of the paper is that it embraces an explorative methodology of research based on case studies to find solutions to the DMC problem. Cabaniss et al. (2007) conduct an analytical literature review that articulates the issues clearly and contextualizes the problem in preparation for the case studies that include the Building Blocks for Youth organization and other groups in various states and counties in the US.

The review of best practices used as the main body of the research effectively empowers the authors to evaluate practices in DMC intervention efforts around the country. Using numerous case studies to find out how the problem of minority contact with the law is being solved allows the authors to form a cohesive and detailed solution to these issues.

Weaknesses, Deficits, and Oversights

The main weakness of the paper is that the authors conducted a shallow analysis of existing literature to form their conclusions. In a paper that relied exclusively on secondary data to form its conclusions, Cabaniss et al. (2007) were rather flippant in conducting a detailed analysis of their main source of data.

Another weakness of the paper was in the author's conclusion that system errors are to blame for the DMC situation that is pandemic in America. The conclusion is weakly supported by the literature review, which tended towards social perceptions and lack of concern for minority affairs as the main cause of DMC.

The failure of the authors to conduct a proper data analysis of the research material cited in their study was a major deficit in the paper. A research paper comprises of literature review, research methodology, and discussion of results, summary, and conclusion. Cabaniss et al. (2007) compressed these sections together, thus failing to meet the criteria for competent research.

The oversight of the authors in writing the paper results from their failure to follow the rules of research. The objective of conducting research is to increase the information available on a particular subject, update the information, and form new insights from research activities. In the article under review, the authors neglected the first two objectives and simply formed insights based on previous research.

Suggestions and Recommendations

To overcome the weakness of insubstantial literature review in a case study that employs secondary research for its insights on the topic under study, the authors should have conducted a longer, more detailed literature review with a substantially larger references page. With no new research in an explorative study, cross-checking all facts with more than one source renders more credence to a research paper that uses secondary data.

The authors should also have followed the conventional structure for conducting research, filling all subtopics of research such as introduction, research, results, and analysis that were lacking in their paper. With the target audience being social professionals, a research paper cannot afford to leave out crucial sections that can be used to judge its suitability as a study text in the field.

If the authors were to observe the recommendation and suggestion stated above, they would overcome the main oversight in their paper, which is that it fails to produce any new information on the topic of DMC. The paper also fails to update existing data in a competent manner, and it comes up with few inconclusive insights whose validity may be questions based on its poor composition.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the paper "Reducing disproportionate minority contact in the juvenile justice system: Promising practices" by Cabaniss et al. (2007) discusses the social and geographic patterns through which disproportionate minority contact with the law thrive in American communities. It attributes reciprocal causes and interactive effects of biases towards minorities to the problem of DMC and ties the issue to racial inequalities in American communities dating back centuries. The weaknesses stated in this paper, while serious, do not hamper the author's effectiveness in articulating the issues surrounding DMC and actions various parties are taking to solve them.

References

Cabaniss, E. R., Frabutt, J. M., Kendrick, M. H., & Arbuckle, M. B. (2007). Reducing disproportionate minority contact in the juvenile justice system: Promising practices. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 12(1), 393-401, doi:10.1016/j.avb.2006.09.004

Listwan, S. J., Cullen, F. T., & Latessa, E. J. (2011). How to prevent prisoner reentry programs from failing: Insights from evidence-based corrections. Pp. 303-313 in Edward J. Latessa and Alexander M. Holsinger (eds.), Correctional Contexts: Contemporary and Classical Readings. (4th ed.), New York: Oxford University Press.