Data were obtained from the police and court records for all 14- and 15-year-old juveniles arrested in Newark, N.J., in 1973. From the total population of 1,484 juvenile arrestees, 464 cases were analyzed. The legal variables examined were the number of previous arrests and the seriousness of the sampled offense. The indicators of substantive criteria were family and school problems, and the discriminatory criteria were race and social class. The variables were entered into a multiple regression with severity of disposition as the dependent variable. Cross-tabular analysis was then used to specify the relationships between the important variables. The presence of family and school problems (substantive criteria) was found to affect sentencing more than discriminatory and legal criteria. Discrimination was not significant in sentencing, and of the legal variables, arrest history was more significant than the severity of the offense in determining sentencing. All of the predictor variables together accounted for about 26 percent of the variance in decisonmaking. That most of the variance remains unexplained is to be expected in a system of substantive justice that ideally uses individual criteria in decisions. Future research should focus on the multitude of substantive variables which affect juvenile court decisionmaking. Tabular data, footnotes, 31 references are provided.