The Fate of the Rehabilitative Ideal in California Youth Authority Dispositions

Abstract

A California Youth Authority (CYA) disposition is almost never viewed as rehabilitative by the youngster or by the proba tion officer recommending it. The court report can be divided into a description of the offense and social analysis. This article is a study of the interplay between the two in the court reports of ten consecutive commitments to the CYA from one county. It analyzes the court reports to uncover what use was made of the child's biography and what emphasis was placed on the offense itself after repeated court appearances, and it looks into the relation of both the offense and the biography to the out come. The intended outcome is apparent from the probation officers' recommendations in the court reports. The probation officer selects the outcome and "widens" or "narrows" the child's biography depending on the stage of the child's delinquent career or the offense. When the outcome is intended to be less severe, the content of the court report (length is not significant) dramatizes the complexity of the child's biography. This gen eralization held up even when the question of a CYA commit ment was not involved (in cases where the choice was between home and foster home or between foster home and open insti tution) and when the choice was between open institution and CYA and, in one case, between the CYA and county jail.