In the Washington State juvenile justice system, serious or repeat offenders receive the full panoply of due process rights and procedures, with the exception of jury trials; minor offenders are diverted to community boards that require community service or victim restitution; and status offenders are removed from the courts' jurisdiction and treated in a voluntary social service setting. Washington has adopted a presumptive sentencing scheme which allows juvenile court judges to step outside guidelines and invoke harsher or more lenient sanctions due to extraordinary circumstances. A 3-year assessment of the Washington juvenile code found that, with the exception of documented instances in which a delinquent's status offense records, sex, and/or race sometimes resulted in harsher sentences when judges invoked their right to step outside the sentencing scheme, the new law worked to keep both youths and the system accountable. The post-reform era had a substantially better record of holding juveniles accountable for their offenses. Although the overall level of severity of sanctions was reduced after the legislation went into effect, there was an increase in the certainty that a sanction of some kind would be imposed. (NRB)