Concerns about bias and disparity in case dispositions-despite inconclusive evidence-have recently spurred interactionist research into the organizational processes and functionaries of juvenile justice. This article reports a study of the role of the juvenile probation officer (JPO) in affecting dispositions, in which the effects of extralegal factors were systematically tested. In one juvenile probation department in the southwestern U.S., 87 JPOs each completed a survey and recommended three dispositions for the case of a juvenile delinquent. The results indicate that the JPOs' background characteristics, organizational situations, and attitudes toward delinquency were crucial variables explaining dispositional disparity. The authors posit that the "IPO factor" can produce treatment differences sufficient to undermine the rehabilitative ideal and confound studies of judicial bias, and suggest that understanding the systematic nature of this factor might facilitate needed reform.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.