ABSTRACT
Juvenile court personnel are committed to several different and
conflicting orientations toward delinquency and its control, ori-
entations summarized in the "social-agency" and "legal" images
of the juvenile court (Dunham, 1958). T h e legal image high-
lights the juvenile court's restraining, controlling, and punishing
functions, functions that demand some guarantee of due process
safeguards. T h e social-agency image orients activities toward pro-
viding "help" and "treatment" to delinquent and other disad-
vantaged youths. I n this light, "the purposes of the juvenile court
are to understand the child, to diagnose his difficulty, to treat his
condition, and to fit h im back into the community" (Dunham,
1958, p. 513). T h i s chapter outlines the juvenile court's commit-
ment to these dual orientations as background for the analysis of
court efforts to implement its treatment goals. and the conse-
quences of these efforts in the following chapters.
