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This article examines the effect of defendant's race on juvenile justice processing in a large southern state. The study traces the movement of a cohort of over 50,000 youths through multiple decision-making stages from intake screening to judicial disposition. After controlling for legal and processing variables in multivariate analyses, we find that race has a direct effect on decisions made at several processing junctures. Indirect and cumulative effects of race are also addressed and implications for future research explored.

Recidivism of 2,738 juvenile offenders who were transferred to criminal court in Florida in 1987 was compared with that of a matched sample of delinquents who were retained in the juvenile system. Recidivism was examined in terms of rates of reoffending, seriousness of reoffending, and time to failure, with appropriate adjustments made for time at risk. By every measure of recidivism employed, reoffending was greater among transfers than among the matched controls.

The criminological literature has traditionally depicted female juvenile misconduct as sexual or "relational" in nature., Increasingly, however, commentators have recognized that this picture is distorted and inaccurate, reflecting biases in American culture and in the juvenile justice system. 2 Historically, American cultural beliefs have encouraged far greater protectiveness toward young wo

A long-term recidivism study was conducted in Florida on matched pairs of juveniles, where one subject in each pair had been transferred to the adult system in 1987 and the other had not. Rearrest information on the pairs from their release from sanctions through November 1994 was used to determine the probabilities of rearrest and the times to rearrest of transfers and nontransfers, adjusting for time at risk. Transfer diminished the rearrest chances for property felons, an advantage that was offset by an enhanced probability of rearrest among transfers for other offense categories. Survival analysis showed that transfers were rearrested more quickly and were rearrested more times on average.