Attributions and Institutional Processing: How Focal Concerns Guide Decision-Making in the Juvenile Court

Abstract

This paper investigates institutional decision-making processes and identify mechanisms that link case processing with subsequent outcomes. Using a sample of juvenile court cases containing probation officers’ narratives, this study investigated court actors’ focal concerns and how such priorities shape attributions about youth. This paper adds to existing sociological work on institutional decision-making by (1) illustrating court actors’ focal concerns that are used to process juvenile cases, (2) identifying decision-making mechanisms that link norms and values to case assessments and outcomes, and (3) theorizing about the ways in which individual and case characteristics can influence institutional decision-making.