Veronika Kalugina

October 22, 2021

Report # 2

A.

1. The title of the scholarly research article is “Adolescent Substance Use and Other

Illegal Behaviors”.

2. The main point of the article is to examine the differences in the incarceration rate

for substance use and other illegal behaviors in African American and White groups

(aged 12-17 years old). “We used data from a national survey to examine arrest rate

disparities between African American and White adolescents in relation to drug-

related and other illegal activities” (Kakade 2012, p.1307)

3. The article discusses the social issue of racial disparities in the juvenile and

criminal justice system, where “African American youths have higher rates of arrest

and detention than White youths” (Kakade 2012, p.1307). This differential treatment

of African American groups leads to a negative effect on their lives.

4. We can determine that this is a scientific research article by looking at empirical

evidence such as an Arrest History, Substance use, and Multinominal Logistic

Regression Analyses Predicting arrest history from the National Longitudinal Survey

of Youth 1997, where they provide data from 6725 youths from 2 racial groups. The

article evaluates collected data from a nationally representative community sample

of youths through objective analyses. Authors state that “the study was limited by

the lack of data on policing behaviors or attitudes and reliance on adolescents’ self-

reports” but it is still important information regarding racial disparities and can be

useful to provide a possible reduction in racial disparities in the future.

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 B.

1. The author is studying two hypotheses in this article: “differential offending”,

meaning one racial group is more offending than another racial group, and a

hypothesis of the “differential treatment”, where one racial group is unequally treated

within justice system, compared to the other racial group.

2. “Two main hypotheses address the overrepresentation of racial/ethnic minorities in

the juvenile and criminal justice systems: (1) the “differential offending” hypothesis

(that this overrepresentation generally reflects racial and ethnic differences in the

incidence, seriousness, and persistence of engagement in delinquent and criminal

behavior) and (2) the “differential treatment” hypothesis (that this overrepresentation

is attributable to inequalities-intended or unintended-in justice system practices as

they affect particular populations)” (Kakade 2012, p.1307).

3. Authors use two types of variables in the hypotheses, where independent variables

were child age, gender, ethnicity/race, family income, urbanicity, high-crime area,

high county unemployment rate, and dependent variables such as no arrests, a

single arrest, or multiple arrests.

4. The results of the study state that “among 6725 youths from 2 racial groups, 543

had been arrested at least once” (Kakade 2012, p.1307). Also, that African

American adolescents were more likely to get arrested multiple times compared to

White youths, with 3.1% to 1.3% among younger teenage groups and 6.5% to 4.1%

among the older age group. At the same time, the report showed that white youths

had higher rates of substance use and drug selling activity than African American

youths. This provides us evidence that supports the hypotheses of the article -

“differential offending” and “differential treatment” and shows that African American

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 youths were 2.5 times more likely to get arrested multiple times than Whites, and 1.6

times more for single arrests, and proves that race remained a significant factor for

arrests.

5. The researcher used a quantitative type of data for this research article. “Our

baseline sample included 6725 youths (aged 12-17 years), of whom 4400 were

White and 2325 were African American” (Kakade 2012, p.1307).

6. Authors used a survey method of data collection to gather empirical evidence –

“Data for the analyses came from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997

(NLSY97)” (Kakade 2012, p.1307).

7. The sample population size that the authors used for this research article were 6725

youths. All of these individuals’ data participated in the study. There were two

different groups that researchers observed – Whites and African Americans.

8. The research was conducted on the macro sociology level because it covered the

higher level of social dynamics, such as arrest rate disparities between two different

races in the justice systems, which is important to public health and criminology.

9. Remember that a microlevel study is not large enough or random enough to be

generalizable. The results of the research article are generalizable to the population

beyond the study because the sample population for this study can be expanded but

only within the same racial groups. If we generalize the study and involve other

racial groups such as Hispanic/Latino, Native American, European American, Middle

Eastern American, Asian American, then the research needs to compare other

ethnic groups as well and collect data needed.

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 C. 

To understand the issue of arrest rate disparity between two different races more fully

we can look more into the family conditions and family income. There is a possibility

that the issue of youth substance use or other illegal behaviors as coming from

unhealthy family conditions or poverty. This issue affects people differently depending

on their gender, class, and race, for example, a youth male that lives in poverty

probably will not be able to pay the bond and hire a lawyer if he ever gets arrested,

does not matter if he is guilty or not, comparing to the white male from a rich family,

who most likely will be able to afford to pay a bond, hire a lawyer and get a reduced

sentence or no sentence.

To understand this issue better we also need to know the causes of the illegal activity

among youths. Qualitative research needs to be done to find out the reasons, by

interviewing the participants and asking them what made them use the substance or do

something illegal. This kind of research needs to be done on the micro-level study,

where besides the data we will be able to investigate the “why” behind an issue. To

Ameliorate the issue with arrest disparity between two different racial groups, we can

use a top-down approach with a help of the government, where the criminal justice

system has to be fair and equal to everyone, and legal assistance and lawyers help

needs to be accessible to everyone. This issue can possibly ameliorate with a help of a

better education system, where youths would be more engaged in school.

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D.

1. Meghana Kakade, Cristiane S. Duarte, Xinhua Liu, Cordelia J. Fuller, Ernest

Drucker, Christine W. Hoven, Bin Fan, Ping Wu, “Adolescent

Substance Use and Other Illegal Behaviors” American journal of Public Health, Vol

102, No 7, 2012.

2. Conley, Dalton. You May Ask Yourself. 5th ed., W.W. Norton, 2012.