After decades of research, the exact impact of race on juvenile court outcomes is still a complex matter. The focus of this study is to address the liberation hypothesis as a potential explanation for racial disparities in juvenile court outcomes. This perspective has not previously been applied to juvenile court outcomes. Results from the analyses demonstrate the differential effect of legal and extralegal factors on serious and less serious cases. The results of this study indicate that legal factors such as crime seriousness or prior criminal record and extralegal factors such as race have a varying influence on juvenile court outcomes, and this influence varies depending on the outcome examined and the race of the youth.

A large body of research indicates that both geography and race influence juvenile justice outcomes, with the exact magnitude and direction of the relationships still under dispute. In either case, differential outcomes likely stem from the varying influence of legal and extralegal factors. This study uses the spirit of the liberation hypothesis to explore how legal and extralegal factors contribute to geographic and racial disparities in juvenile court outcomes. Logistic and multinomial logistic regression are used to examine factors that influence preadjudication and disposition outcomes between an urban and suburban county, with the data partitioned by race within each county. Contrary to predictions, the analyses found more varying effects of legal and extralegal factors across race in the urban county than in the suburban county. Explanations of these findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

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Data concerning the internal investigation of complaints against police have rarely been available to researchers. The present study uses information derived through an examination of Internal Affairs complaint investigation files obtained from a large Midwestern police agency in order to examine issues related to the processing of complaints against the police. The article includes an overview of existing literature concerning citizen complaints and internal complaint review structures. Data are presented concerning complainants and accused officers, investigative findings, and the factors cited by investigators in order to justify their findings. Issues regarding the interpretation of sustain rates for citizen complaints are discussed, as well as suggested improvements for the internal review of complaints against the police.

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