In late 19th century America, new schools of criminological thinking asserted that crime had its origins in a complex blend of environmental and social factors rather than in the moral deficiencies of the offender. Partly as a result of this new attitude the handling of offenses by juveniles became differentiated from adult cases, first through the construction of separate penal institutions and, beginning in 1899, through the establishment of courts specializing in juvenile cases.This study was undertaken to examine the attitudes of juvenile probation officers toward the Supreme Court’s Kent, Gault and Winship decisions which made a number of due process procedures mandatory in juvenile cases. Hypotheses were examined which asserted that (1) juvenile probation officers have a generally negative attitude toward due process, (2) probation officers with backgrounds in social work have more negative attitudes toward due process than do their colleagues with other types of backgrounds, and (3) within juvenile probation departments supervisors have more positive attitudes toward due process than do their subordinates.
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