NCJ Number
97079
Journal
American Journal of Sociology Volume: 90 Issue: 4 Dated: (January 1985) Pages: 801-824
Date Published
1985
Length
24 pages
Annotation
The political economy framework is useful for explaining the impact of external political and economic factors in case processing in juvenile courts, but is less useful in explaining the effects of internal organizational variables.
Abstract
According to this perspective, a people-processing organization is an arena in which various interest groups compete and negotiate among themselves to shape the organization's resource allocation rules in such a way as to optimize their own interests. This perspective was investigated in a 1974 national survey of 216 juvenile courts. Most of the information came from questionnaires completed by judges. The study focused on the proportion of referred cases that were judicially handled and the rate of commitment of offenders. The relationships found among the environment, the court response, and case processing patterns were best exemplified in the effects of the court's judicial status and the judicial selection procedure. Courts of general jurisdiction could use their judicial status to buffer themselves from environmental pressures to process more cases. Their more formal legalistic procedures enabled them to regulate their input through nonjudicial handling. However, courts with elected judges were more likely to have a higher commitment rate because of the electorate's pressure to institutionalize offenders. Similarly, the quality and quantity of demand for court intervention influenced case processing decisions at entry. However, the judge's ideology had no direct effect on case processing decisions. A loose-coupling perspective rather than a political economy framework may better explain a court's internal structure. Further research should focus on the relationships between variables and decision models. Data tables, a list of 45 references, and an appendix defining study variables are included.