Intake records for all youth alleged to have committed a crime and who were referred to court intake workers provide the data for the study. The 63,801 cases comprise all youth processed for North Carolina for 1977-79. The demographic variables were race, sex, age, and urban/rural residence. The legal variables were complainant, offense (delinquent or status), previous court status, number of offenses, and number of previous intakes. The process variables were the amount of time used by the intake worker to reach the recommendation and the number of contacts made with family, complainant, and others before making the intake decision. The intake decision examined was whether to petition the youth to court or divert him/her to another agency. Time was the best predictor, with an intake decision made in the first 5 days most likely to involve petitioning to the court. Legal variables were also strongly related to intake recommendations, while demographic variables were related but not as strongly as the other classes of variables. Race was found to relate to intake recommendations variably when controlling for the nature of the offense. For delinquent offenses, blacks are slightly more likely to be petitioned to court; but for status offenses, whites are more likely to be petitioned to court. Tabular data and six notes are provided.