3.1 The criminal justice system as an assimilation milieu for the  (Page 4/7)

Arrestees

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, the main source of information on arrests, provide information on the racial characteristics of arrestees, but not their ethnicity. However, criminal justice agencies in some large urban areas publish limited information on the proportion of Hispanics and other ethnic groups among arrestees. New York State figures provide an example of inter-ethnic differences in arrest. In New York State, 233,871 (20%) of the 1,146,092 juvenile and adult arrestees in 1999 were classified as Hispanics (DCJS, 2004). To estimate the extent of ethnic groups’ representation in arrests, each group’s total number of arrests was divided by its estimated population. Hispanics had an arrest rate of 8,155 arrests per 100,000. In comparison, the arrest rates for non-Hispanic Whites, Blacks, Indians, and Asians were 4,469, 14,574, 2,446 and 1,141 per 100,000 of their respective populations. New York state classifies arrestees by race as White, Black, Indian, or Asian; and separately by ethnicity as Hispanic or non-Hispanic. By U.S. Census convention, Hispanics can self-classify as any of those races, or as “other.” To compare Hispanics with non-Hispanic Whites, Blacks, and so forth, Hispanic arrests were subtracted from all White arrests. In arrests as in victimization, Hispanics have lower rates than Blacks, but higher rates than Whites or other groups.

Table 2. New York State. Juvenile and Adult Arrests per 100,000 Population, by Type of Arrest and Ethnicity, 1999.

Source: New York State Department of Criminal Justice Services. 1999 Crime and Justice Annual Report. Section Two: Arrests . Albany, NY, 2004.

Prisoners

Of the 1,409,280 persons over the age of 18 in state or federal prisons in 2003, 268,100 (19%) were Hispanics. Non-Hispanic Whites, Blacks, and others (Asians, Native Americans, and other groups) comprised 35, 44, and 2%, respectively (BJS, 2004). In 1999, juvenile justice facilities housed 104,413 persons, of whom 18,012 (18%) were classified as Hispanic. Whites, Blacks, and “others” were 39, 38, and 4%, respectively (Sickmund, Sladky,&Kang, 2004). The stated figures equal less than 100% because of rounding error. Table 3 compares Hispanic, Black, White, and other adult and juvenile imprisonment rates. Hispanic adults have higher imprisonment rates than Whites and Asians, but lower imprisonment rates than Blacks.