• Step by step instructions for accessing the Sourcebook
• Dominant Discourse: Constraint through Categories Included
• Dominant Discourse: Constraint Through Search Terms
• Multiple Interpretations of the Sourcebook Tables

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  This question is based on the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1999. The sourcebook is supported by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and is maintained by the State University of New York at Albany.

  Step by step instructions on using the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1999 to find tables and figures.

  • Link on the Albany online Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics 1999.
  • Scroll down almost half the file to select a section that might have the table we seek.
  • What variables are we looking for? Race, because we are asking about black juveniles as compared to, presumably whites. Age, because we are interested in juveniles, not adults. Disposition of the arrest, because diversion is one of the possible dispositions, and because we are hypothesizing that blacks are diverted less often than whites.
  • Notice that Section 5, Judicial Processing of Defendants, speaks of dispositions. Link to that section.
  • You can either search the section or browse through it. Try the search:
    juvenile AND race

    by typing that phrase into the search box and pressing submit. This will give you a link to the table: Juvenile court case outcomes, by type of offense and race of juvenile offender, United States, 1997 (Table 5.69.

  • Or you can browse the section by continuing to scroll until you find a table you'd like to link to.
  • If you choose to browse, you will find: "Characteristics of juvenile offenders and case outcomes." Link to that choice. Notice that it takes you to the same table as the search results. But notice also that in this process you have picked up new terminology for writing about the table: "characteristics of juvenile offenders and case outcomes." Don't forget to put that phrase in quotes if you borrow it outright! Especially if you use the phrase in a paper, and it's a subheading in the Sourcebook, it will be noticeable, if you forget to use quotes.
  • Notice also that the tables are set up as pdf files. If you do not have Acrobat Reader on your home computer, or if you do not have access at home to a computer, remember to print the table for your home use.

  • Now that you have Table 5.69 on screen (or in hardcopy) notice that we do, indeed, see that our presumption that blacks were to be compared to whites was right. Labels for Race or "White" and "Black." This is not unusual in social science data. Only in recent decades have we offered more varied descriptions of race and included more categories.

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  Dominant Discourse: Constraint Through Search Terms

  • juvenile AND diversion : "Nothing was returned by your search."
  • juvenile AND disposition: "Nothing was returned by your search."
  • juvenile AND outcome:

  Juvenile court case outcomes, by characteristics of juvenile offenders and type of offense, United States, 1997 (Table 5.68) Acrobat file (8k)

  Juvenile court case outcomes, by type of offense and race of juvenile offender, United States, 1997 (Table 5.69) Acrobat file (6k)

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• Multiple Interpretations:

  • Juveniles taken into police custody by method of disposition and population group, 1998 a

  • Juvenile court case outcomes by type of offense and race of juvenile offender, United States, 1997

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• Dominant Discourse: Constraint through Categories Included For now, you may read ahead on this piece:
  • Failed Revolutions: Social Reform and the Limits of Legal Imagination
  • Richard Delgado's Home Page
    One of his earliest articles with Jean Stefanovic was on how the categorization in library catalogs lays the seed of discrimination. That was about 15 years ago, right after he taught at UCLAW. Should be listed on his bio, but his home page is being revised, and I couldn't get his bio. jeanne, November 1, 2000.

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