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Racial disparities persist at every stage of juvenile justice

Youth of color — Black youth most consistently — are overrepresented at every stage of U.S. juvenile justice processing, and meta-analytic and matched-comparison evidence shows disparities persisting after offense and prior record are controlled, especially at detention, formal processing, secure confinement, and waiver; how much of the remaining disparity reflects differential system treatment versus unmeasured differences in involvement remains genuinely debated.