NCJ Number
76310
Journal
Juvenile and Family Court Journal Volume: 32 Issue: 1 Dated: (February-March 1981) Pages: 31-50
Date Published
1981
Length
20 pages
Annotation
The juvenile justice system must be held accountable for the discretionary decisionmaking which is a necessary part of its activities, according to this review of extralegal decisionmaking factors at the police and intake level.
Abstract
Recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have demanded greater regularity and procedural formality in the juvenile justice system, which is characterized by broad discretionary powers. However, their impact has fallen only on adjudicatory stages of processing. The police, however, screen juveniles at the intake stage, combining legal and extralegal decisions, and continuing the discretionary processing of children in trouble at the prehearing stage of the system. There is a need to distinguish between the proper use of discretionary powers in the juvenile justice system and their abuse. There is no evidence that dispositional decisions at the intake level are improperly made on the basis of such variables as the social background or demographic characteristics of the offender, the personality of key decisionmakers, or the structural organization of police and intake departments. However, individual police and intake officials cannot insure that their decisions are consonant with administratively promulgated policies and standards, since such standards do not exist. Furthermore, due to the lack of cooperation between the segments of the system, intake officials are not made aware of the juvenile's prior police contacts, and as a result, a habitual offender may be disposed of informally. Administrative officials and juvenile court judges should promulgate recordkeeping and decisionmaking policies which insure uniform access to available information and predictability of decisionmaking at all levels of the system. Furthermore, decisionmaking criteria should be directly related to the rehabilitative goals of the system. To this end the due process justice model should be used because it is neither punishment, as in the crime control model, nor treatment, as in the rehabilitative model, but rather the assurance that governmental power will not be used to intervene unjustly in the lives of children. A discussion of several studies and case law and 97 footnotes containing references are included.