The Political Economy of Juvenile Court: Investigating the Relationship between Organizational Factors and “People Processing” Decisions

• In Event: Juvenile Courts and System Reform

Abstract

This study approaches the juvenile court as a “people-processing organization” whose case management—i.e., inputs and outputs—will be influenced by the political economy of the juvenile court. This includes four elements that are rarely examined in juvenile justice research: external polity, external economy, internal polity, and internal economy, which are measured as county- and state-level variables in a multilevel design. Using a multi-state and multi-year dataset, the study employs multilevel modeling to assess the impact of political economy on court-level intake and placement rates—the “input” and “output” of the juvenile court considered as a people processing organization. Findings and implications for juvenile justice research and policy will be discussed.

Authors

• Steven Zane, Florida State University

• Jhon Pupo, Florida State University