Representative bureaucracy: Active representation in a juvenile justice context

Representative bureaucracy is one way to reconcile the need for administrative efficiency with the normative requirements of democracy. In theory, a representative bureaucracy is an organizational structure that permits decision-makers to act more quickly and more flexibly than an elected body. A representative bureaucracy is comprised of an employee composition that is more representation of the general public, at least in demographic terms, than legislative bodies. This research tests a number of hypotheses concerning the impact of individual attributes of delinquency case managers and of the organizational context in which they work on their intake recommendations to the office of the state attorney.