Topic: Cost Effectiveness of Youth Court Compared to Juvenile Court

Question: As chairman of our local county Juvenile Justice Council and Director of the Columbia County Teen Court in Florida I am trying to develop information regarding the cost effectiveness of Teen Courts vs. Juvenile Courts.

Responses from Coordinators:

I think it is a mistake to try to show the "cost effectiveness" of a Teen Court program for a couple of reasons:

• A criminal court is not a revenue-raising body. We don't put a price on justice in this country, no matter what city councils and county commissions (legislative branch) might want to do. Courts with judges whose jobs depend on "productivity measures" like the amount of fines produced are courts where justice is skewed to the State.
• Teen Court will either be VASTLY more expensive than criminal court because of the costs of operation relative to the number of cases it can process, (unless you do it for free with no budget like I do), or VASTLY more expensive than criminal court because it doesn't collect any fines (see 1 above).
• The only way to legitimately tie money to a Teen Court program is to put a cash value on the community service hours (usually minimum wage) and then show the cash "contribution" to the community through the work of the Teen Court defendants, OR
• To track recidivism rates in Teen Court vs. Juvenile Court. You can only court recidivists for those who go to Juvenile Court who would have been eligible to participate in Teen Court and didn't (which is really hard to do).

It's a great program and I really hate it that some people try to get us to put a price tag on doing the right thing.

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Debra Linhart
Coordinator
Greater Jefferson Community Youth Peer Court
P. O. Box 911
Jefferson, OR 97352
Phone: (541) 327-1301
linhartfam@proaxis.com

I put together a rough cost outline for my city council when asking for funding. I used figures provided by our county juvenile department. Here's what they told me: Cost per day per bed in detention; the total cost for a youth including detention per day. This figure was the total department budget/number of open referrals during a calendar year. They indicated this was the most accurate reflection because it includes kids from intake, diversion, probation, all program use, etc. It did not include the cost of the court and its auxiliary services. The figures factored in every youth who touches the juvenile system (those who require extraordinary resources and those requiring minimal intervention). Their figures covered the entire program NOT breaking it down program by program - otherwise programs such as detention would be very high (2.5 million budget per year for 36 youth per day).

I then took my program budget and showed cost per offender. I also included a statistic to include youth volunteers. I feel this is important because it includes the prevention aspect of our program. In addition, I include the number of youth & adult volunteer hours and the amount of community service payback hours of offenders. On the surface, the peer court program costs can appear high per offender, however, if you include the number of volunteer youths involved than you can truly reflect the broad scope of your program. In other words, you can demonstrate financially that your program is an intervention AND prevention program. Further, you can show through the community payback hours and the number of volunteers involved that your program is community based instead of some detached agency supervising offenders. Also, due to major budget cuts in the juvenile department, they indicated that without the peer court diversion option, many of the first-time offenders would most likely have received little or no action. Lastly, if you have experienced success involving victims in your disposition process, then include this data in your report.

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Eric Watkins
Coordinator
Village of Owego Youth Court
Youth Services Unit
Owego Police Department
Owego, NY 13827
Phone: (607) 687-2233
Fax: (607) 687-2235
juvenile@stny.rr.com

I know that the Delaware County Youth Court, NY has put together some great figures for rural youth courts.

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Olivia Harrington
Teen Court Coordinator
Duncanville Teen Court
P.O. Box 380280
Duncanville, TX 75138-0280
Phone: (972) 780-5063
Fax: (972) 780-6463
Oharrington@ci.duncanville.tx.us

The 2 courts do not compare in Texas. They handle different kinds of cases.

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Patrick Quilinan
Coordinator
Village of Lincolnshire Peer Jury
Lincolnshire Police Department
One Olde Half Day Road
Lincolnshire, IL 60069
Phone: (847)883-9900
Fax: (847) 883-9909
Pquill@village.lincolnshire.il.us

To put it simply, the only thing we pay for in our Peer Jury court nights is the time of the on-duty police officer that coordinates the cases for that night. With juvenile court there is the cost of the state prosecutor, the arresting officers time and the time of the juvenile officer if one is involved in the investigation.

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Shirley Zahn
Program Coordinator
Winnebago County Teen Court
504 Algoma Boulevard
Oshkosh, WI 54901
Phone: (920) 236-1120
Fax: (920) 303-3030
szahn@co.winnebago.wi.us

It is probably tough to answer that with hard numbers, but some examples I use: It costs more each year to house one juvenile in the correctional facility in Wisconsin than our entire Teen Court budget. Each social worker (there are 20, and two supervisors) at Human Services carries a delinquency caseload of thirty-forty delinquents, so we offset about three social work caseloads per year (potentially), if we prevent the youth from re-offending. Our budget for the entire Teen Court program is equal to or less than one social worker's wage and benefit package.

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