The data cover handling of youths at four stages of the juvenile court process: referral, detention, petition, and placement. In addition to overall trends in the processing of white and minority youth, this analysis examines trends in four offense categories including person, property, drugs, and public order offenses. In general, while there was a slight increase in referrals and petitions of white youths, there was a decline in the number of white juveniles detained or placed. In contrast, there was a substantial increase in the number of nonwhite cases, particularly in the rate of referral. Once in the system, nonwhites were more likely to be formally processed in 1989 than in 1985. White youths were actually less likely to face formal processing, at least in terms of incarceration. The wide variation between counties included in this sample suggests the need for more comparative analysis. 7 tables, 1 figure, and 7 references