The Effect of Social Characteristics on Juvenile Court Dispositions

Of the growing number of criticisms directed at various facets of the juvenile justice system, none is more common than the contention that the informality of the juvenile court encourages discrimination. The purpose of this study, which is based on data obtained from a sample of 1,522 official court records, is to provide an assessment of the impact of a variety of social background, demographic, and offense-related variables on the severity of sanctions imposed by juvenile court judges in one southeastern metropolitan jurisdiction. The findings show that the extra-legal variables which were considered have an effect on case disposition even when offense seriousness and prior records of delinquency are held constant.