What agencies and attorneys collaborate with the court in the handling of delinquent juveniles?
Law enforcement, pretrial-detention centers, prosecution offices, public defenders, and probation agencies all collaborate with the court in handling delinquent juveniles. Law-enforcement agencies refer 85 percent of delinquency cases to juvenile court. In making referrals of apprehended youths, law-enforcement officers choose whether to remand a youth to his or her parents, remand to the parents and send a paper complaint to the probation intake or prosecutor’s office, or bring the youth to a pretrial-detention center and request admission (following a screening process). Pretrial-detention centers receive juveniles screened into these facilities following a delinquency apprehension. Prosecution offices, most frequently a county office but sometimes a local office of the state attorney general, have a primary concern to look after the safety and welfare of the community, and, quite particularly, of victims of juvenile offenses. They assert differing levels of responsibility in the juv
