Race, Juvenile Court Processing and Case Outcomes: Fluctuation or Stability?

The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which Sampson and Laub's (1993) structural theory of inequality can be applied over time as related to the treatment of youth throughout numerous stages of court proceedings. The study sample will include data from a nationally representative sample of over 200 counties with the potential of more than 500,000 individual-level juvenile case records for the years 1985, 1995, 2005, and 2010 (if not available, 2009). The counties selected, for the most part, will be based on the jurisdictions that were examined in Sampson & Laub's original study. The main data sources will consist of data collected by the National Juvenile Court Center (NJCC) from the National Juvenile Court Data Archive (NCJDA). Census data will also be provided that includes county population estimates from the County and City Data Book, as well as numerous structural indicators of each county. Given the nested nature of the data (juveniles within counties) and that the dependent variables in the proposed study are dichotomous, multivariate procedures in the form of hierarchical generalized linear model (HGLM) will be used to estimate the impact of individual and community-level predictors on juvenile court outcomes. Logistic regression will be used when estimating models for the effects of individual level variables on court outcomes.ca/ncf