In the Best Interest of the Child

Abstract

Although students of the juvenile court have called attention to the complexity and importance of the decision-making activities of its personnel, few studies have examined the complex organizational and micropolitical processes involved in making placements, one of the juvenile courts' most consequential dispositions. This article offers a single case analysis of a probation officer's efforts to negotiate the out-of-home placement of a delinquent youth with that youth's parents. The article analyzes the strategies and practices used successfully by this probation officer during one critical encounter to negotiate the parents' agreement to this course of action. These strategies and practices depended in large part on the probation officer's ability to detail specific ways in which out-of-home placement would serve the “best interest of the child.”