Strange Interlude: An Analysis of Juvenile Parole Revocation Decision Making

This paper presents an analysis of the gestait of decision making in 114 revocation hearings held by a juvenile parole board in a western state. The gestait perspective emphasizes the social production of decisions.Revocation decisions were found to be made “backstage” in prehearing conferences which occurred during the interlude between official hearings. In these conferences, decision makers, acting as a team, typed juveniles and agreed on a script to be performed during formal hearings. These decisions, and accounts for them, were embedded in an organizational context of occupational roles, tasks, and resources that maintained individualized justice as the working ideology of juvenile justice.