Does the Detention Decision Influence Juvenile Court Processing? An Examination of Cumulative Disadvantage

Scholars have called for increased attention to the possibility of cumulative disadvantage in the criminal and juvenile justice systems. One approach is to assess whether early system decisions, where disparities are present, influence later decisions. Accordingly, this study examines whether the decision to detain juvenile offenders prior to adjudication produces cumulative disadvantage across later stages of juvenile court processing. To do so, the study assesses whether the relationships between juvenile court outcomes and key case-level variables—race and ethnicity, sex, offense characteristics, and prior record—are mediated by detention, using current best practices for estimating indirect effects in the context of categorical outcome variables. Using a multi-state sample of 38,000 petitioned cases distributed across 83 counties in three states, the present study finds limited support for the hypothesis that the early detention decision contributes substantially to the cumulative disadvantage of defendants. Notably, this stands in contrast to some prior research findings that have found substantial mediation by detention, interpreted as strong evidence of cumulative disadvantage. The study suggests that this may be due to the different methodologies employed, and calls on future research to imagine new and different ways to explore the important question of cumulative disadvantage in the juvenile justice system.