Punishment and family control: Actor-focused blame and attributions for juvenile delinquency

An internet survey of 255 professionals in the juvenile justice system and 106 university students was conducted to examine punishment orientation, family control orientation, predictions of the fundamental attribution error, the history of the juvenile court, and theories of juvenile delinquency. Punishment and family control are discussed as two aspects of social control in the juvenile justice system. Legislation and reform of juvenile courts that impinges on due process rights of young offenders, particularly minority youth, reflects a punishment orientation. Disproportionate separation rates between white and minority youth and disproportionate confinement of minority youth in adult prisons reflect a family control orientation. Both punishment and family control orientations are argued to arise from biased attribution of delinquency and result in disproportionate attribution to actors compared to social conditions. Actor-focused blame is explained in terms of the fundamental attribution error and related research in social psychology. It is argued that in addition to biased attribution, the influence of maternalist feminists on the creation of the juvenile court has led to a backlash against child welfare models of juvenile justice. Deterrence, biological, psycho-analytic, trait, social learning, control, strain, subcultural, and labeling theories of delinquency are examined to create a set of templates for analyzing respondents' attributions for delinquency in terms of actor-focused blame. A set of 5 hypotheses were tested using data from the survey of professional respondents. It was hypothesized that professionals in the juvenile justice system are punitive toward young offenders (H1a); those who serve as line-staff with high-contact are the most punitive (H1b); and those who perceive young offenders as the most dangerous are the most punitive (H1c). It was hypothesized that juvenile justice professionals are oriented toward family control (H2a) and those most favorable toward young offenders are the least oriented toward family control (H2b). Evidence of the fundamental attribution error was sought (H3a), in addition to perceptually-biased attributions (H3b), attributions biased in favor of the in-group (H3c), and attributions biased by the need for control (H3d). The residual influence of the early juvenile court was expected to be reflected in more positive attitudes and less punitive attitudes toward young offenders by women (H4a), group home operators' negative attitudes toward the family of young offenders (H4b), and workers' attitudes toward culturally sensitivity (H4c). Last, mapping theories of juvenile delinquency onto respondents was expected to show that social learning theory is the most popular with professionals (H5). The results supported all hypotheses except no evidence was found that professionals in the juvenile justice system are more family control oriented, an adequate test of in-group bias on ethnicity was not achieved due to sample size limitations, and women were significantly less favorable toward young offenders and no less punitive than men. Though favorability to cultural sensitivity increased with age, it was unrelated to favorability toward young offenders. Unexpected results showed that the juvenile justice system may have a greater impact on the attitudes of Non-Anglo professionals such that Non-Anglos positioned in the juvenile justice system are adherents to deterrence theory and Non-Anglo respondents outside the system are critics of deterrence theory. This effect of position was not found among Anglo respondents. The results are discussed in terms of social control the juvenile justice system exerts more strongly on both professionals and young offenders who are of minority status and poor.