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A Jury of Their Peers: A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Teen Court on Criminal Recidivism

  • Empirical Research
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Abstract

Juvenile delinquency has been on the decline for a number of years, yet, juvenile courts continue to assess more than 1 million cases per year. Involvement with the juvenile justice system has been linked to a number of risk factors and consequences that may impact positive youth development; however, evidence-based correctional programs that divert juvenile offenders away from formal processing are limited. Teen Court is a specialized diversion intervention that offers an alternative to traditional court processing for juvenile offenders. Despite the rapid expansion of Teen Courts, there is little comprehensive and systematic evidence available to justify this expansion. This meta-analytic study examines the effects of Teen Court on the recidivism of juvenile offenders. The literature search resulted in the selection of 14 studies, which contributed 18 unique effect sizes with a total sample of 2125 treatment group and 979 comparison group youth. The findings suggest that Teen Court is no more effective at reducing recidivism than (a) formal processing or (b) other diversion programs. Implications of formal and informal court processing for low-risk, first-time young offenders are discussed. The authors draw on the Risk-Need-Responsivity model to provide recommendations for policies and practices.

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Notes

  1. For example, randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental designs in which participants were matched on at least some variables (e.g., criminal history, age, sex).

  2. Due to inconsistent reporting of some variables across studies, the variables that were selected for examination in the moderator analysis were restricted to those that were reported in sufficient frequency across all of the studies in the set.

  3. To ensure independence of effect sizes in each set of studies, the following decision rules were used: (1) choosing one study among multiple studies with overlapping samples (e.g., Dugas (2006), Stickle et al. (2008) and Wilson et al. (2009)); and, (2) choosing one outcome measure from a study that reported on multiple recidivism outcomes (e.g., Gase et al. (2016a)).

  4. When a group (gender, ethnicity) composed of over 60% of the entire group of participants, that group was identified as the predominant group (see Appendix E of Lipsey and Wilson 2001).

  5. As expected, the pooled effect from the fixed effects model was smaller, but similar to the random effects model, was not statistically significant (LOR = 0.072, z = 0.71, p = 0. 476).

  6. While a rating of “2” on the Maryland Scale of Scientific Methods may be considered comparatively weak on the spectrum of methodological rigor (although there is a control group, there is little to no matching of participants), the significance of the pooled effect remained unchanged when such studies were excluded from the analysis (n = 3; LOR = 0.311, z = 1.03, p = 0.304).

  7. The findings from the fixed effects model suggest that the random effects model may have slightly overestimated the pooled effect, however, the findings remained non-significant (LOR = 0.173, z = 1.32, p = 0.187).

  8. It is worth noting that while the Q-between statistics for the Gender and Ethnicity variables were not significant, both nearly reached statistical significance at the .05 level. As such, while these results cannot be considered conclusive, they provide insight toward possible participant characteristics associated with beneficial impacts.

  9. Sensitivity analysis was conducted on the set of studies; however, as the funnel plot was reasonably symmetric and there was nothing substantive to report from the analysis, these findings are not discussed here.

  10. Again, the robustness of the pooled effect with respect to methodological rigor was tested, and despite the exclusion of studies rated as a “2” on the Maryland Scale (n = 2), the non-significance of the pooled effect remained unchanged (LOR = 0.409, z = 1.64, p = 0.101)

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Acknowledgments

Author Contributions

J.B. and J.W. conceived of the study together. J.B. participated in the study design, extracted the data from the set of studies, conducted data analysis, drafted the initial manuscript, and participated in multiple manuscript revisions. J.W. participated in the study design, conducted the systematic literature search, participated in the coordination and interpretation of data, and participated in multiple manuscript revisions. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jessica Bouchard School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, V5A 1S6, Canada

    Jessica Bouchard & Jennifer S. Wong

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  1. Jessica Bouchard
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  2. Jennifer S. Wong
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Correspondence to Jessica Bouchard.

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This project complies with all known ethical standards for research

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Appendix

Appendix

Electronic searches included the following 21 databases:

  1. 1.

    Academic Search Complete

  2. 2.

    Academic Search Premier

  3. 3.

    Canadian Research Index

  4. 4.

    Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials

  5. 5.

    Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

  6. 6.

    Criminal Justice Abstracts

  7. 7.

    Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects

  8. 8.

    Education Resource Information Center (ERIC)

  9. 9.

    Medline

  10. 10.

    National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS)

  11. 11.

    Open Access Theses and Dissertations

  12. 12.

    ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Full Text

  13. 13.

    PsycARTICLES

  14. 14.

    PsycBOOKS

  15. 15.

    PsycINFO

  16. 16.

    Public Affairs Information Service (PAIS) International

  17. 17.

    Social Sciences Abstracts

  18. 18.

    Social Sciences Full Text

  19. 19.

    Social Services Abstracts

  20. 20.

    Sociological Abstracts

  21. 21.

    Web of Science

Hand searches included the following journals:

  1. 1.

    Crime and Delinquency

  2. 2.

    Criminal Justice Policy Review

  3. 3.

    Journal for Juvenile Justice and Detention Services

  4. 4.

    Journal of Criminal Justice

  5. 5.

    Journal of Experimental Criminology

  6. 6.

    Journal of Juvenile Justice

  7. 7.

    Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency

  8. 8.

    Juvenile and Family Court Journal

Grey literature searches included the following websites:

  1. 1.

    Australian Institute of Criminology (http://www.aic.gov.au/)

  2. 2.

    Center for Court Innovation (http://www.courtinnovation.org/)

  3. 3.

    Google (www.google.ca)

  4. 4.

    Google Scholar (www.scholar.google.ca)

  5. 5.

    Home Office Research Unit (https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/home-office/about/research)

  6. 6.

    National Association of Youth Courts (http://www.youthcourt.net/)

  7. 7.

    Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) (https://www.ojjdp.gov/)

  8. 8.

    The Youth Court of New Zealand (https://www.youthcourt.govt.nz/)

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Bouchard, J., Wong, J.S. A Jury of Their Peers: A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Teen Court on Criminal Recidivism. J Youth Adolescence 46, 1472–1487 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-017-0667-7

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