'Minority Youth, Inequities in Justice' event addresses racial disparity in youth discipline

Black students in Missouri's public schools system are five times more likely than their white peers to receive an out-of-school suspension, according to a 2018 report by the ACLU of Missouri. Another report by The Sentencing Project in 2015 found Black youth in Missouri were almost five times more likely to be detained or committed than white youth.

The disparity in how minority youth are disciplined in the school and juvenile justice system is a deep-rooted problem in Missouri's education and justice system. In response, community groups got together to organize the first part of “Minority Youth, Inequities in Justice,” a virtual forum that addressed this issue Wednesday night.