Artikel

Klasse-bias in geregistreerde jeugdmisdadigheid

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Abstract

Class-bias in registered juvenile delinquency — The functioning of the juvenile justice system and the decisions made by various agencies within this system have received increasing attention from criminologists in recent years. In seeking an understanding of the discretionary processes, researches have tried to isolate factors related to dispositions at distinct decision points. One of the main aspects that has been investigated is whether social control agencies discriminate between juveniles on the basis of socio-economic status. The existence of discrimination of this kind is assumed in many texts and theoretical works in line with the labelling approach, and several empirical studies have assessed the influence of extra-legal variables on dispositional outcomes of juveniles, which lead to the well-known criticism of arbitrariness, mystification, unfairness and discrimination in sentencing juveniles. Nevertheless, many conclusions of research on juvenile justice decision-making contradict each other: some claim to find an important effect of social class on various judicial decisions (e.g., Scarpitti & Stephenson, 1971;Jongman, 1974; Thomas & Sieverdis, 1975; Carter & Cleeland, 1979), while others show that a legalistic model is more important in understanding the criteria on which decisions in juvenile justice are based (e.g., Terry, 1967; Weiner & Willie, 1971; Cohen & Kluegel, 1978; Liska & Tausig, 1979). Extreme caution is urged in generalizing from these studies, which differ in time, place, methodology and scope. In this paper, it is argued that several studies suffer from methodological and conceptual pitfalls which do not only put their validity into question but also give some understanding of the pattern of contradictory findings concerning the general issue of class-bias in the juvenile justice system. Therefore, an important conclusion of this review is that a clear understanding of the decision-making process is unlikely until a systematic research strategy emerges to replace the piecemeal approaches used up to now.

How to Cite:

Blomme, J., (1981) “Klasse-bias in geregistreerde jeugdmisdadigheid”, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Wetenschappen 26(4), 275–291. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/tvsw.94803