Hostname: page-component-669899f699-tpknm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-27T11:52:19.673Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Diverting and Abdicating Judicial Discretion: Cultural, Political, and Procedural Dynamics in California Juvenile Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Alexes Harris
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although tensions between substantive and formal rationality in the adult criminal justice system have received a great deal of attention, the existence of these tensions in the juvenile justice system has received little scholarly consideration. I seek to remedy this gap by exploring how punitive policies associated with the war on crime impact the formal and informal process of justice, the court community and work group, and the exercise of discretion in the juvenile courts. Drawing on qualitative data collected in three juvenile courts in Southern California, I identify the mechanisms by which prosecutors divert judicial discretion from the traditional rehabilitation-oriented bench officers to bench officers who are more accepting of the criminalization of juveniles. In addition, I investigate how and why rehabilitation-oriented bench officers at times abdicate their decisionmaking authority and make rulings that contradict their own assessments. My findings suggest that as the war on crime is extended to youth, the juvenile courts increasingly share the criminal courts' emphasis on offense rather than offender, enhanced prosecutorial power, and adversarial relationships within the court.

Type
Articles of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , June 2007 , pp. 387 - 427
Copyright
© 2007 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

An earlier version of this article was presented at the American Sociological Association Conference in August 2003, Atlanta, Georgia. I am grateful for the extensive comments of Bob Emerson and Katherine Beckett on earlier drafts of this article, and for the thoughtful suggestions for the development of the article from Sara Steen, Ross Matsueda, and Joan Graham. I would also like to thank the Law, Society and Justice working group at the University of Washington; the Macarthur Research Network on Juvenile Competency and Culpability; and the LSR editor and reviewers for the critique they provided in developing the ideas in this article.

References

References

Albonetti, Celesta (1991) “An Integration of Theories to Explain Judicial Discretion,” 38 Social Problems 247–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albonetti, Celesta (1992) “Charge Reduction: An Analysis of Prosecutorial Discretion in Burglary and Robbery Cases,” 8 J. of Quantitative Criminology 317–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albonetti, Celesta (1997) “Sentencing under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines: Effects of Defendant Characteristics, Guilty Pleas, and Departures on Sentence Outcomes for Drug Offenses, 1991–1992,” 31 Law & Society Rev. 789–822.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnes, Carol, & Franz, Randal (1989) “Questionably Adult: Determinants and Effects of the Juvenile Waiver Decision,” 6 Justice Q. 117–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, Lawrence (1980) “Responses of Federal District Judges to Court of Appeals Decisions: An Exploration,” 33 Western Political Q. 217–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baum, Lawrence (1997) The Puzzle of Judicial Behavior. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beckett, Katherine (1997) Making Crime Pay. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Blumberg, Abraham (1967) Criminal Justice. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.Google Scholar
Cicourel, Aaron (1968) The Social Organization of Juvenile Justice. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.Google Scholar
Davis, Kenneth (1969) Discretionary Justice: A Preliminary Inquiry. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Dixon, Jo (1995) “The Organizational Context of Criminal Sentencing,” 100 American J. of Sociology 1157–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eisenstein, James, & Jacob, Herbert (1977) Felony Justice: An Organizational Analysis of Criminal Courts. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Eisenstein, James, et al. (1988) The Contours of Justice: Communities and their Courts. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Emerson, Robert (1969) Judging Delinquents: Context and Process in Juvenile Court. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Engen, Rodney, & Steen, Sara (2000) “The Power to Punish: Discretion and Sentencing Reform in the War on Drugs,” 105 American J. of Sociology 1357–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fagan, Jeffrey, & Zimring, Franklin (2000) The Changing Borders of Juvenile Justice: Transfer of Adolescents to the Criminal Court. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Feld, Barry (1993) “Juvenile (In)Justice and the Criminal Court Alternative,” 39 Crime and Delinquency 403–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feld, Barry (1999) Bad Kids: Race and the Transformation of the Juvenile Court. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Flemming, Roy, et al. (1992) The Craft of Justice: Politics and Work in Criminal Court Communities. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fogel, David (1975) We Are the Living Proof: The Justice Model for Corrections. Cincinnati: Anderson.Google Scholar
Frazier, Charles E., et al. (1995) Juvenile Justice Transfer Legislation in Florida: Assessing the Impact on the Criminal Justice and Correctional Systems. Tallahassee, FL: Task Force for the Review of Criminal Justice and Correctional Systems and the Collings Center for Public Policy.Google Scholar
Garland, David (1990) Punishment and Modern Society. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Griffin, Patrick, et al. (1998) Trying Juveniles as Adults in Criminal Court: An Analysis of State Transfer Provisions. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.Google Scholar
Harrison, Paige, & Karberg, Jennifer (2002) Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Department of Justice.Google Scholar
Heumann, Milton, & Loftin, Colin (1979) “Mandatory Sentencing and the Abolition of Plea Bargaining: The Michigan Felony Firearm Statute,” 13 Law & Society Rev. 393–430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, Mark (1990) Screwing the System and Making It Work: Juvenile Justice in the No-Fault Society. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Junger-Tas, Josine (2002) “The Juvenile Justice System: Past and Present Trends in Western Society,” in Weijers, I. et al., eds., Punishing Juveniles: Principle and Critique. Portland, OR: Hart Publishing.Google Scholar
Kessler, Daniel, & Piehl, Anne Morrison (1998) “The Role of Discretion in the Criminal Justice System,” 14 J. of Law Economics, and Organization 256–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kramer, John, & Ulmer, Jeffery T. (2002) “Downward Departures for Serious Violent Offenders: Local Court ‘Corrections’ to Pennsylvania's Sentencing Guidelines,” 40 Criminology 601–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krisberg, Barry, & Austin, James (1993) Reinventing Juvenile Justice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miethe, Terence D. (1987) “Charging and Plea Bargaining under Determinate Sentencing: An Investigation of the Hydraulic Displacement of Discretion,” 78 J. of Criminal Law and Criminology 155–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, Charles A., & Miethe, Terence D. (1986) “Regulated and Unregulated Sentencing Decisions: An Analysis of First-Year Practices under Minnesota's Felony Sentencing Guidelines,” 20 Law & Society Rev. 253–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nardulli, Peter, et al. (1988) The Tenor of Justice: Criminal Courts and the Guilty Plea Process. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Podkopacz, March, & Feld, Barry (1995) “Judicial Waiver Policy and Practice: Persistence, Seriousness and Race,” 1 Law & Inequality 73–178.Google Scholar
Puzzanchera, Charles (2003) Delinquency Cases Waived to Criminal Court, 1990–1999. OJJDP Fact Sheet. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rainville, Gerard, & Smith, Steven (2003) Juvenile Felony Defendants in Criminal Courts. NCJ 197961. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savelsberg, Joachim (1992) “Law That Does Not Fit Society: Sentencing Guidelines as a Neoclassical Reaction to the Dilemmas of Substantivized Law,” 97 American J. of Sociology 1346–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segal, Jeffrey, & Spaeth, Harold (1993) The Supreme Court and the Attitudinal Model. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Singer, Simon (1996) Recriminalizing Delinquency. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spohn, Cassia, et al. (1987) “The Impact of Ethnicity and Gender of Defendants on the Decision to Reject or Dismiss Felony Charges,” 25 Criminology 175–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stahl, Anne (1999) Delinquency Cases Waived to Criminal Court, 1987–1996. Fact Sheet. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.Google Scholar
Steffensmeier, Darrell, & Demuth, Stephen (2000) “Ethnicity and Sentencing Outcomes in U.S. Federal Courts: Who Is Punished More Harshly?,” 65 American Sociological Rev. 705–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steffensmeier, Darrell, & Demuth, Stephen (2001) “Ethnicity and Judges' Sentencing Decisions in Pennsylvania: Hispanic-Black-White Comparisons,” 39 Criminology 145–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steffensmeier, Darrell J., et al. (1998) “The Interaction of Race, Gender, and Age in Criminal Sentencing: The Punishment Costs of Being Young, Black, and Male,” 36 Criminology 763–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strom, Kevin, & Smith, Steven (1998) Juvenile Felony Defendants in Criminal Courts. NCJ 165815. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutton, John (1988) Stubborn Children: Controlling Delinquency in the United States, 1640–1981. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Tonry, Michael (1995) Malign Neglect: Race, Crime and Punishment in America. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Tonry, Michael, & Coffee, John (1987) “Enforcing Sentencing Guidelines; Plea Bargaining and Review Mechanisms,” in Von Hirsch, A. et al., eds., The Sentencing Commission and Its Guidelines. Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Torbet, Patricia, et al. (1996) State Responses to Serious and Violent Juvenile Crime. Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.Google Scholar
Ulmer, Jeffery, & Kramer, John (1996) “Court Communities under Sentencing Guidelines: Dilemmas of Formal Rationality and Sentencing Disparity,” 34 Criminology 383–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulmer, Jeffery, & Kramer, John (1998) “The Use and Transformation of Formal Decision Making Criteria: Sentencing Guidelines, Organizational Contexts, and Case Processing Strategies,” 45 Social Problems 248–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Max (1968) Economy and Society. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

Charles R. v. Superior Court, 110 Cal. App. 3d 945, 168 Cal. Rptr. 284, 2nd Dist. (1980).Google Scholar
Edsel P. v. Superior Court, 1st Dist. (1985).Google Scholar
Hicks v. Superior Court, 4th Dist. (1995).Google Scholar
In re Aontae D., 25 Cal. App. 4th 167 (1994).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1967).Google Scholar
In re Julio N., 3 Cal. App. 4th 1120 (1992).Google Scholar
In re Krill, Cal. App. Unpub. LEXIS 5624 (2002).Google Scholar
Johnson v. Superior Court, 50 C2d 693 (1958).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kent v. United States, 383 U.S. 541 (1966).Google Scholar
Manduley v. Superior Court, 27 Cal. 4th 537 (2002).Google Scholar
People v. Browning, 45 Cal. App. 3d 125, 141 [119 Cal. Rptr. 420] (1975).Google Scholar
People v. Superior Court (Zaharias M.) 25 Cal. Rptr. 2d 838, 21 Cal. App. 4th 302 (App. 2 Dist.) (1993).Google Scholar

Statutes Cited

Gang Violence and Juvenile Crime Prevention Act of 1998 § (2) (K), Ballot Measure 4, 1999-2000 Legis. Sess. (Cal. 1999).Google Scholar
Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 1976, N.Y. Laws S. 878 (1976).Google Scholar
United Kingdom Crime and Disorder Act 1998 (c. 37).Google Scholar
Youth Criminal Justice Act, C-1, Ottawa, Minister of Supply and Services Canada (2002).Google Scholar