Juvenile court dispositions : alternatives and limitations

Abstract

The current research is a quasi-experimental study of juvenile case dispositions that seeks to identify what dispositions are being utilized by the juvenile courts in a large Midwestern state. As a result of the 1974 federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (207, P.L, 93-415), sources of bias in the juvenile justice system needed to be investigated and removed. Therefore, the current research examined if bias exists in the system in the form of race, sex-typing, age, or judges/magistrates determining who gets institutionalized. One year's worth of county data was collected from juvenile court and probation records in a large Midwestern state. The study found that dispositional sanctions were not utilized evenly across the judges. Furthermore, the research investigated the time between the official filing of charges and disposition. The research was able to determine that the time between the filing of the official charges and disposition (mean = 152) was significantly longer (t=13.218, df=458, p>.001) that the 80 day period recommended by the National Advisory Council Committee for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Future research should investigate the effect of the time between filing and disposition on committing subsequent offenses.