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Structural Variations in Juvenile Court Processing: Inequality, the Underclass, and Social Control

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Robert J. Sampson  and
John H. Laub
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Abstract

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This article develops a macrolevel framework on inequality and juvenile court processing by integrating ideas drawn from conflict theory, research on urban poverty, and recent race-specific trends in drug enforcement. Using 1985 data for more than 200 U.S. counties, we examine how structural context—especially racial inequality and the concentration of “underclass” poverty—influence the formal petitioning, predisposition detention, and out-of-home placement of juveniles. The data are generally consistent with the hypothesis that underclass blacks are viewed as a threatening group to middle-class populations and are thus subjected to increased control by the juvenile justice system. We discuss the implications of our results for a better understanding of the relationship between larger societal forces of increasing poverty and racial inequality and local systems of formal social control.

Type
Symposium: Crime, Class, and Community—An Emerging Paradigm
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , 1993 , pp. 285 - 311
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

We gratefully acknowledge financial support for this article from the National Science Foundation (SES-9111556). The data analyzed herein were made available by the National Juvenile Court Data Archive which is maintained by the National Center for Juvenile Justice under support from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice. The data were originally collected by the following: Maricopa County Juvenile Court Center; California Bureau of Criminal Statistics and Special Services; Connecticut Chief Court Administrator's Office; Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services; The Judiciary of Hawaii; Iowa Department of Human Services; Maryland Juvenile Services Agency; Minnesota Supreme Court; Mississippi Department of Youth Services; Missouri Division of Youth Services; Nebraska Commission on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice; New York Office of Court Administration; North Dakota Office of State Court Administrator; Cuyahoga County (OH) Court of Common Pleas; Pennsylvania Center for Juvenile Justice Training and Research; South Dakota Court Administrator's Office; Tennessee Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges; Utah Administrative Office of the Courts; Virginia Department of Corrections; and the Supreme Court of Wisconsin. Neither the aforementioned data suppliers nor the National Center for Juvenile Justice bear any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations here. We thank Howard Snyder, Terry Finnegan, and Ellen Nimick at the National Center for Juvenile Justice for their crucial roles in data construction, and John Hagan for helpful comments on a previous draft.

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