Record-Keeping Practices in the Policing of Juveniles

Abstract

This article describes the record-keeping practices of two suburban police departments. It is argued that the projected organizational career and anticipated use of a record shapes its form and content in significant ways. Police officers orient, as record keepers, to the prospective uses and careers of the documents they produce. Record work also includes understanding the role of the officer's personal records and the interactional “running record” to the organization. In sum, understanding the production and use of these various records is indispensable to making sense of what the record “really” means.