The official records of 591 juveniles referred to the Juvenile Probation and Parole Office were analyzed, and interviews with all juvenile probation and parole officers (JPPO's) assigned to this jurisdiction were conducted. Two of the claims made in earlier research about juvenile justice in rural communities were not supported by the research findings. First, the argument that rural communities are homogeneous was not supported by the interviews with JPPO's, who understood their jurisdiction, in part, in terms of socioeconomic class and the perceived effect of class on family stability. Second, the common assumption that firsthand knowledge of and communal ties to youth in smaller, more rural communities translates into low levels of formal social control was not supported by the analysis. Poor, Hispanic youth had an especially high likelihood of referral, which raises important questions about the ways in which race and class affect juvenile justice decisions that are not answered with the statistical analysis. More indepth, qualitative analyses of the policing, jailing, and court-processing of juveniles in rural settings are needed. 1 table, 3 notes, and 19 references