Organizational Concerns and Political Tensions: The Rise of the Prosecutor in the Contemporary Juvenile Court.

The transfer of minors to the criminal court from the juvenile system is not necessarily an indication of the juvenile courts' agreement with prosecutors' assessments of waiver-eligible cases. In fact, at times judges have competing assessments of minors' amenability to the juvenile court, yet acquiesce to prosecutors' petitions for transfer due to organizational issues and political tensions. The present paper explores the juvenile institutional setting and examines organizational and contextual issues that affect the outcome of decision-making. These contextual issues include broader and individual organizational goals and restraints and political tensions. When court officials do not arrive at similar characterizations of waiver-eligible cases, these outlying issues become highlighted. Rich qualitative data taken from observations of waiver hearings and other juvenile court proceedings at three juvenile court field sites, and interviews with court officials are used to explore the setting of the contemporary juvenile justice system. This analysis finds that the waiver process highlights existing tensions between juvenile court judges and prosecutors over amounts of discretion to determine the future outcome of cases. Ironically, prosecutors, who once did not even have a role within the juvenile court system, increasingly are accruing power and discretion that at times usurp the role of the juvenile court judge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]