Discrepant Assumptions in Empirical Research: The Case of Juvenile Court Screening

Abstract

Much of the sociological literature on discretionary decision making in juvenile court screening makes certain assumptions: 1) that being sent to court is a harsher sanction than being diverted from court; 2) that screening decisions necessarily involve judgments about the individual juvenile offender; and 3) that official records are a useful data source for studying the processing of cases. These background assumptions may seem plausible, but my data suggest that they are quite different from the working assumptions of intake workers in juvenile courts. At least some of the time, intake workers regard court appearance as the more lenient screening option; base their screening decisions on considerations not directly related to the individual offender; and develop records that deliberately obscure their actual case handling. Their reasoning and working assumptions are discussed in detail, with an attempt to assess what it means in empirical research when researchers' assumptions turn out to be discrepant from those made by members of the system under study.

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