Voices Matter: The Impact of Serious Legal Problems on 16- to 30-year-olds in the Black Community

Focus Groups

Of the people who responded to the survey, 26 participated in the focus groups. The groups were a mix of people who knew each other and some who did not, either because they were drawn from different programs at one of the community partners, or because they attended a different focus group that better suited their schedule.

Sixteen of the focus group participants identified as women and nine as men. One participant opted not to identify a gender.

The four focus groups were scheduled for 90 minutes each with two of them lasting slightly longer.

Participants' responses are presented here according to commonalities in their experiences. While discussions started along the four themes of money, home, security, and safety, the discussion often crossed into different or related areas. As participants became more comfortable with the discussion, they returned to substantive legal issues addressed in earlier themes. Others described an issue as discrimination or security that had a financial or family dimension. This fluid understanding of the substantive legal categories was anticipated and addressed at the analysis phase. In many instances, when asked if they had experienced a certain type of serious legal problem, such as an issue related to money, only one person would say they had experienced such an issue. However, as the discussion continued, more participants would share similar experiences. As a result, it is difficult to count the number of participants who recognize the substantive legal category of their problem. In the results described here, the themes and common experiences are described reflecting the focus of the discussion, but without assigning a frequency of occurrence to each type of legal problem, because participants did not reliably make that identification.