Previous research indicates that a record of prior convictions or prior contacts with the police is associated with placing youth at a higher risk for being charged. Prior contact with police increases the probability that a youth will receive formal treatment on subsequent contact. As part of a larger 2003 project supported by the Department of Justice Canada, this study attempted to understand the ways in which police use their discretion when dealing with youth who are believed to have violated the law and identify the factors which affect their exercise of discretion. This study hypothesized that prior contacts would have a substantial positive association with the probability of an apprehended youth being charged versus processed informally and the introduction of prior contacts as a statistical control will substantially affect the assessment of the impact of other factors on the police decision to charge apprehended youth. A multivariate statistical analysis was conducted on data from the Incident-Based Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR2) for 1995 to 2001. The variable capturing the number of prior police contacts was constructed by linking together records from 1995 to 2001 pertaining to the same individual. Both hypotheses in the study were strongly confirmed. The number of prior contacts with police had a substantial impact in police decisionmaking with youth. The overall impact of prior contacts was the greatest of any variable considered in the analysis of factors affecting police decisionmaking. References