“Who Signs the Complaint?” Relational Distance and the Juvenile Justice Process

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of “relational distance” between complainant and offender as a determinant of legal sanctions in juvenile status offender cases. After reviewing evidence suggesting that greater relational distance is associated with harsher sanctioning, I develop the case for an alternative “relational resource” hypothesis, which emphasizes that conflicts among proximate parties entail an intrinsic loss of resources for the accused. This hypothesis is supported by status offense data from four decision points in the juvenile justice system which show, with some variation across decision points, that youth who are the subject of parent-initiated complaints fare consistently worse than youth accused by the police. The available evidence suggests that this is not explained by the possibility that parental accusations only occur when behavior is especially serious. Analyses of temporary detention and court disposition data reveal higher-order interactions that suggest that the impact of the complainant's identity is partially contingent on the formality of agency procedures and on the family's circumstances.

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