Locked Up: Fear, Racism, Prison Economics, and the Incarceration of Native Youth

In the national conversation about youth overincarceration and disproportionate minority contact in the juvenile legal system, Native American youth are often statistically invisible. Closer attention, however, reveals that Native youth who come into contact with the juvenile legal system are more likely to be locked in secure confinement than other youth, with disproportionality rates in some localities exceeding those experienced by Black and Latino youth. This article examines available information on Native youth in tribal juvenile legal systems during the fifteen-year period from 1998 to 2013.