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“Who Signs the Complaint?” Relational Distance and the Juvenile Justice Process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Dale Dannefer
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Abstract

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This paper investigates the role of “relational distance” between complainant and offender as a determinant of legal sanctions in juvenile status offender cases. After reviewing evidence suggesting that greater relational distance is associated with harsher sanctioning, I develop the case for an alternative “relational resource” hypothesis, which emphasizes that conflicts among proximate parties entail an intrinsic loss of resources for the accused. This hypothesis is supported by status offense data from four decision points in the juvenile justice system which show, with some variation across decision points, that youth who are the subject of parent-initiated complaints fare consistently worse than youth accused by the police. The available evidence suggests that this is not explained by the possibility that parental accusations only occur when behavior is especially serious. Analyses of temporary detention and court disposition data reveal higher-order interactions that suggest that the impact of the complainant's identity is partially contingent on the formality of agency procedures and on the family's circumstances.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , 1984 , pp. 249 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

*

The data for this study were collected under the auspices of the Department of Institutions and Agencies, State of New Jersey, with funds provided by that agency and by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. Portions of the analysis were conducted while the author was supported by the Sociology of Social Control Training Program at Yale University. The author is indebted to Donald Black, Elaine Dannefer, Betty Drysdale, Richard Lempert, Russell K. Schutt, Ralph R. Sell, Karol Soltan, and the LSR's anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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