The crosstabs program of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used to obtain cross tabulations of offender age by disposition at each case decision point. There was little evidence that the elderly were treated more leniently than younger offenders by the California criminal justice system in 1980. Although age was a better predictor of arrest rates than sex or race, the power of age to predict processing by the criminal justice system was not great. In fact, elderly felons received harsher treatment at the 'front end' of the system (through conviction) and more lenient treatment at sentencing. This result, however, indicates differentiation rather than disparity (i.e., no controls were used and thus 'other things were not equal'). Also, when individual offenses were considered, the apparent leniency at sentencing was not found for all offenses. Thus, the apparent overall leniency at sentencing resulted from a mix of offenses weighted toward those offenses with more lenient sentences. When a measure of association was used, age accounted for little or no variance in outcome at case decision points. 6 tables and 15 references.