In your first assignment, you played around in the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department’s website. Hopefully you all found the annual reports. Here is a link to that section (I hope) https://hcjpd.harriscountytx.gov/About-Us/Research-DataLinks to an external site. Use the 2022 annual report, the most recent and look at referrals on page 5. A referral is when a juvenile is charged with an alleged delinquent act (crime) and the referral is sent to the probation department to handle. (We will discuss the various ways to handle later.) Right now, just focus on the numbers of total referrals and the data broken down by race by percentage. Then, I want you to research the racial breakdown of Harris County. There are various ways to do this, so make you pick a good one. Just please make sure it is reputable to make sure it is accurate. Starting with a search on “Harris County Demographics” is a good idea. When using data, make sure your total does not exceed 100%. Be careful with White Alone and White Non- Hispanic. White Alone will more than likely include Hispanic non-black. Once you have this, compare the county’s racial breakdown to the racial breakdown of young people referred to the juvenile justice system. Do you find the racial breakdown of the referrals proportionate to the overall Harris County Population? Please provide details on what you found and your thoughts on this.
Remember that this will require some research so give yourself some time.
