Despite statutes and rules of statewide applicability, juvenile justice administration varies consistently with urban, suburban, and rural social structure and context. In urban counties, which are more heterogenous and diverse, juvenile justice intervention is more formal, bureaucratized, and due process-oriented. Formality is associated with greater severity in pre-trial detention and sentencing practices. By contrast, in more homogeneous and stable rural counties, juvenile courts are procedurally less formal and sentence youths more leni-

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Downloaded from 337 mate subcultures within institutions, and most studies of prison cultures document their oppositional qualities, with the hostility and antagonism between inmates and staff subsumed in an &dquo;inmate code.&dquo;2The two competing explanations of the inmate social system are commonly referred to as the &dquo;indigenous origins&dquo; model and the &dquo;direct im-portation&dquo; model. The former provides a functionalist explanation that relates the values and roles of the subculture to the inmates' responses to problems of adjustment posed by institutional deprivations and conditions of confinement.4 Accordingly, the formal organization of the prison shapes the informal inmate social system. While earlier studies of adult maximum-security prisons described a monolithic inmate culture of collective opposition to staff values and goals,5 more recent studies suggest that a modification of organizational structure in pursuit of treatment goals results in considerably greater variability in the inmate social system and the processes of prisonization

Within the past three decades, judicial decisions, legislative amendments, and administrative changes have transformed the juvenile court from a nominally rehabilitative social welfare agency into a scaled-down, second-class criminal court for young people.! These reforms have converted the historical ideal of the juvenile court as a social welfare institution into a penal system that provides young offenders with neither therapy nor justice. The substantive and procedural convergence between juvenile and criminal courts eliminates virtually all of the con

Although the Supreme Court repeatedly cautioned that youthfulness adversely affects juveniles' ability to exercise Miranda rights or make voluntary statements, it endorsed the adult waiver standard-knowing, intelligent, and voluntary-to gauge juveniles' Miranda waivers. By contrast, developmental psychologists question whether young people understand or possess the competence necessary to exercise Miranda rights. This article analyzes quantitative and qualitative data of interrogations of three hundred and seven (307) sixteen-and seventeen-year old youths charged with felony offenses. It reports how police secure Miranda waivers, the tactics they use to elicit information, and the evidence youths provide. The findings bear on three policy issuesprocedural safeguards for youths, time limits for interrogations, and mandatory recording of interrogations.

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