The article explores the rehabilitative ideal as it provides an organizationally acceptable language that frames the officers' attributions to clients and shapes their justifications, both in intent and in effort. The results showed that the recommendations of JPOs in one large juvenile justice department were complex products of negotiated meanings, including attributions of deviance and accounts for dispositional strategies. While JPOs were unable to recommend any unanimous dispositions for the case at hand, they did demonstrate systematic efforts in their rationales, depending on whether they were advocating institutionally preferred or non- preferred alternatives. 6 tables, 17 notes, and 97 references