Drawing on Feld’s (1991) “justice by geography” thesis, we examined whether juvenile court outcomes and case-level influences on those outcomes varied across urban and rural courts. Using a sample of 60,068 juvenile referrals across 66 counties in one state, we estimated direct effects of urbanism on detention, petition, adjudication, and judicial placement, as well as cross-level interactions between urbanism and several case-level factors for each outcome. We found limited support for the hypotheses. First, findings indicated that odds of detention were significantly greater in more urban courts, but indicated no differences in other outcomes. Second, findings also indicated greater extralegal differences (race, sex, and age) in more urban courts—contrary to hypotheses. Taken together, findings highlight the localized yet complex nature of juvenile justice processing and emphasize the need for additional multilevel research assessing the role of other contextual factors as potential sources of variation across macrosocial units.

借鉴费尔德（Feld，1991）的“地域正义”理论，我们研究了少年法院的审判结果以及案件审理对城市审判结果的影响在城乡法院之间是否存在差异。我们使用一个州66个县的60,068个青少年转介样本，我们估算了城市化对拘留，请愿，审判和司法安置的直接影响，以及城市化与每种结果的几个案例级因素之间的跨层次交互作用。我们发现对这些假设的支持有限。首先，调查结果表明，更多城市法院的拘留几率明显更高，但其他结果无差异。其次，调查结果还表明，更多城市法院的法外差异（种族，性别和年龄）更大，与假设相反。在一起