NCJ Number
154013
Date Published
1995
Length
370 pages
Annotation
Focusing on juvenile justice in two California cities, this volume challenges the conventional view of juvenile delinquency and focuses on how the everyday organizational workings of the police, probation agencies, courts and schools contribute to various kinds of transformation of the original events that led to law enforcement contact.
Abstract
The analysis uses a variety of new techniques, including ethnomethodology and community studies as well as analysis of basic statistical data. The author criticizes the common view that assumes that juvenile delinquents are natural social types distributed in some ordered manner and produced by a set of abstract internal or external pressures from the social structure. The analysis focuses on how various agencies may generate juvenile delinquency by their routine encounters with youth. The discussion also focuses on the relevance of methodological issues to different theoretical problems and to substantive areas in sociology. Tables, chapter notes, name index, and subject index