Applying the Behavior of Law to Juvenile Justice Decision Making

• In Event: Juvenile Justice Decision-Making

Abstract

Much juvenile justice research, whether implicitly or explicitly, examines whether discrimination exists in processing. These studies are built on two assumptions: a. that legal responses are reactions to offender behavior, and/or b. that differences in treatment are a result of arbitrary or discriminatory practices by juvenile justice personnel. A theory by Donald Black (1976) proposes that invocation of the law, or governmental social control, varies by five variable aspects of social life (i.e., stratification, morphology, culture, organization, alternative social control), rather than by the behavior of the offender or of justice actors. In this study, we use Black’s theory of law as a framework to examine juvenile justice decision-making in one mid-Atlantic state. Specifically, we investigate whether juvenile detention and adjudication decisions are predicted by the offenders’ vertical location, social integration, literacy, respectability, and informal social control. Preliminary findings indicate moderate support for the theory.

Authors

• Allison Chappell, Old Dominion University

• Scott R Maggard, Old Dominion University