Teen Court Offenders, Their Experience, and Re-Offending: Processing the Soft End of Juvenile Justice

Teen courts, in which youths sentence other youths for low-level, first-time offenses, are becoming a popular alternative to traditional court processing for juvenile offenders. Despite this recent rapid proliferation, there has been little scholarly research on teen courts' effect on youths' behavior or attitudes. This study used a sample of 38 youths and their parents/guardians to describe offenders and their experiences of a teen court in an Illinois county, and model completing sentences and re-offending based on these factors. These youths reflected the population of area youths and were normative teenagers with respect to self- and parent-reported problem behavior. They reported that teen court processes were fair and that they were satisfied with their sentences, but girls were less positive than boys. Girls also reported less delinquency than boys, and therefore saw themselves as less deserving of the type of public sanctions imposed by teen court than boys did. There was no support for the claim that many advocates have made that the teen court experience positively affects most of the target population's behavior: while reported short-term delinquency among those offenders with significant problem behavior did decrease, teen court experiences were not associated with sentence completion or police contact after teen court.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Rasmussen, Andrew Edward

Contributors dc:contributor

• Aber, Mark S.

• Sociology, Criminology and Penology

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3131012

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/82056