Towards Achieving Racial Equity in Juvenile Justice: Reexamining Conventional Trauma Instruments

Early life adversity has long been associated with the onset and course of criminal behavior and juvenile justice involvement. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of research on the differential experiences of early life trauma and trauma symptomology among justice involved youth of color who are ubiquitously overrepresented in the juvenile justice system (JJS). Conventional trauma instruments used in the JJS may yield limited cultural relevance or applicability to racially minoritized justice involved youth as they rarely capture concepts of race-based trauma. While research has explored the relative effects of racial trauma above and beyond other traumatic experiences among minoritized youth in the JJS, differential trauma experiences and differential effects between trauma and delinquency among racial groups have not been extensively explored. Conducting multivariate analysis of variance with appropriate post hoc tests and bivariate correlations, the results revealed significant mean differences between racial groups on experiences of early life trauma via conventional trauma instruments; white youth reported higher rates of trauma events including cumulative trauma, relative to black and Hispanic youth, but had similar rates of trauma symptoms relative to black youth. Furthermore, while there were no racial group differences on reports of delinquency, there were vastly different trauma-based risk correlates by racial group; white youth had several trauma indicators associated with delinquency, whereas black and Hispanic youth had no associations. Results suggest conventional trauma instruments have limited cultural and racial relevancy for minoritized justice involved youth. Implications are identified for intersectional youth participatory action approaches to instrument development centered on discovering raced-based traumatic stress among racially minoritized justice involved youth.