Question: We've been struggling with evaluation here at Teen Court since our inception in 1995. We do have access to recidivism statistics via juvenile court. Could you ask the other Teen Courts in your list serve what methods they use to evaluate?

Responses from Coordinators:

Jill Harris, Teen Court Coordinator
Capitol Area Teen Court
P.O. Box 724
Raleigh, NC 27602
Phone: (919) 856-5671
Fax: (919) 856-5673
jillharris@co.wake.nc.us

We are faced with that problem as well. Our juvenile court system as of now is NOT on a computer system, everything is done by hand. We have done one report on recidivism. We made an excel spreadsheet with all of the teen court participants since the beginning. We had to, by hand, go through each file. Once that was created we took a lap top computer to the juvenile court office and again, by hand, looked through their filing system. We looked up each person by hand. Now here is where it gets a little tricky, we consider recidivism happening if the youth had a charge filed, some will argue and say it isn't until they are found guilty. Anyway, for the purpose of this report we marked it if any teen court offender had a new charge after or during their teen court experience. This was all for juveniles. Then for adults and the juveniles who turned 16(an adult) since being involved in teen court we accessed the NC criminal database and looked up each person on the computer. We are fortunate to ave access to the public database right from my office and several others in the office. It took a long time and we estimated a margin or error + or - 2%. The next report we do we will already have those cases on the excel sheet and we will have to add all the cases since then and go back and check ALL cases. It is by no means an easy or error proof process but was the best thing I could come up with for the time being. I actually had an intern from a local college do this as her internship project. The information we gathered was what their first charge was & when it happened. If they did have a new charge we documented what the new charge was and when it happened. We wanted to see if the charges were the same or getting worse and we wanted to see the time frame from when they completed teen court to when they were charged again.

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Cory Fink, Talbot County Teen Court Coordinator
Department of Juvenile Justice
600 Dover Road ~ Suite 104
Easton, Maryland 21601
(410) 822-4180 ext. 127
Fax: (410)822-5550
cfink@tcps.k12.md.us or finkc@djj.state.md.us

The Talbot County Teen Court Program uses a survey that we send to both the parents and youth who participate. We send it out twice a year (winter and summer) we enclose a cover letter and return envelope that is self addressed and stamped. The survey's ask the parent and youth to respond to questions such as "accountability, fairness of disposition, recidivism, overall experience, and if they are willing to come back to Teen Court as a juror and work their way through the program." We ask the parents to rate the program using the "Lickert scale" and are able to compile those results through the use of our interns. We have about a 40% return rate on our surveys.

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Don Learned, Ed.S
Teen Court Coordinator
20th Judicial District Teen Court
2ll0 Kansas Ave, Great
Bend, KS 67530
tc20ks@hotmail.com

I will respond to this request. We also have somewhat of a problem with evaluations. We presently do not have a computer system that all law enforcement agencies and county attorney offices are connected. I guess we need some kind of l984 system, not really. But--we do the best we can. We think we have about a l0% recidivism rate. Of course we know when the juvenile breaks the Teen Court sentence and so we have no problems with this, but if he gets in trouble again we may not be aware of this. I am aware that some districts Teen Courts have a computer system that can track the juvenile until forever, I guess. Even though we don't have the perfect system, it is working well for us. We have an evaluation form we use for the juvenile and parents when the juvenile finishes the Teen Court sentence and I would be glad to send this person a copy. It is not great and I got many of the ideas from the Teen Court Bible as we in Kansas call the blue book the national office sends out.  We are a small district serving about 60,000 citizens and we have been in existence for 4 years with 284 juvenile cases.

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Jeanie Lyles Mitchell
Administrative Office of the Courts
100 Millcreek Park
Frankfort, Kentucky 40601
Phone: (502) 573-2350
jeaniel@mail.aoc.state.ky.us

We have had our program evaluated by a university since we 1993. Currently Eastern Kentucky University is our evaluator. Copies of their reports, forms, etc. should be obtained from Dr. James Wells, Ph.D., EKU, 103 Stratton, Richmond, KY 40475. 859-622-1158.

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Chuck Snyder
c/o Whatcom County Superior Court
311 Grand Avenue
Bellingham, WA 98226
Phone: (360) 738-2457
Fax: (360) 676-6793
csnyder@co.whatcom.wa.us

Our coordinator, Cathy Beaty may reply, but I wanted to note that as part of our state grant we have to have an evaluation process. We have a professor from the local university who has devised it and uses her students to proctor it. We have some preliminary data from the first year, which looks really good. We would be willing to share it with anyone who wants to see it, and can put them in touch with the evaluator if they want to discuss her methods.

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Cathy Heimann, Administrative Assistant
Knox County Teen Court
Knox County Teen Court
55 West Tompkins
Galesburg, IL 61401
Phone: (309) 345-3800
Fax: (309) 345-3897
knoxteenct@misslink.net

We send out an evaluation to those who complete Teen Court successfully. It has a section for youth and a part for parent/guardian. We include a self-addressed envelope. We are running about 50% response rate, mostly quite positive. Additionally, we send a list of Teen Court participants to the Police Department and the captain informs us of any who have been rearrested.

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Brian Leverenz, Community Service Administrator
Peer Jury Program
New Trier Township
739 Elm Street
Winnetka, IL 60093
Phone: (847) 446-8203
Fax: (847) 446-1743
brianbikes@yahoo.com

We get our referrals from local police departments, not from juvenile court. With 5 departments in the program, its possible that a juvenile may get arrested by one department, sent to peer jury, released, and then arrested by another department. This has happened in our program. We do not have the ability to track recidivism, unless they would be re-referred to Peer Jury, unlikely because we do not take second offenses. To evaluate our program, we have decided upon two measures. One is what percent of offenders complete their community service and receive acceptable evaluations from the work site. WE have a completion rate of 92%. The second is a questionnaire of offenders after they are released. It asks if they thought the sentence was fair, if the work was appropriate, the jury process fair, etc. Surprisingly, better than 80% of offenders thought the process worked well.

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Leslie Comeaux, Teen Court Coordinator
Keller, Halton City, Watauga Teen Court
7101 Whitley Road
Watauga TX 76148
Phone: (817) 514-5823
Fax: (817) 281-1191
Lcomeaux47@hotmail.com

I have made up an evaluation questionnaire and I send it out to approx 100 people a year who have come through the teen court. For better results on returns include a self addressed stamped envelope.

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Eugene Duran, Teen Court Coordinator
Valencia County Teen Court
Village of Los Lunas-Valencia Co.
P.O. Box 1209
Los Lunas, NM 87031
Phone: (505) 866-8041
Fax: (505) 866-8044
durane@ci.los-lunas.nm.us

In my opinion, one of the best ways to evaluate a program is total operational budget divided by number of cases processed. Then divide this number by the number of hours spent on each case. Number of hours spent on each case is the equalizing factor, which will compensate for the types of cases you process. There should also be a limit to the number of hours you can expend on a case. In other words, A Teen Court program should be spending more time on a shoplifting case than a speeding ticket.

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Peggy Callihan, Coordinator
College Station Teen Court
PO Box 9960
College Station, TX 77842
Phone: (409) 764-3499
Fax: (409) 764-3894
pcallihan@ci.college-station.tx.us

Due to a lack of standards in this area, and varying amounts of information to measure recidivism, I have devised my own measures. I count as a repeat offender, any Teen who has completed Teen Court and receives any other citation within one year from his/her completion. I see all minor citations that come into our court. I have no idea if they have committed other offense in other local, district courts.

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Nathan Miller, Probation Officer
Wrigth County Teen Court
Wright County Court Services
10 2nd St, NW Rm 141
Buffalo, MN 55313
Phone: (763) 682-7712
nathan.miller@co.wright.mn.us

We use recidivism as well, comparing Teen Court offenders with our traditional diversion offenders. We also track the number of volunteers (jurors) and numbers of parents of offenders involved. We have a satisfaction survey that is used at the completion of the juror training, but we haven't used one for the offenders and parents yet, though that would make sense.

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Sharon Leon, Executive Director
Anchorage Youth Court
PO Box 102735
Anchorage, AK 99510
Phone: (907) 274-5986
Fax: (907) 272-0491
ayc@alaska.net

Another agency collects and compiles Anchorage Youth Court defendant statistics, and has since 1996. Previous to that AYC collected its own data, but on a more limited basis. A YRP employee is located in the Anchorage Youth Court office, reads cases with AYC representatives as they are referred, explains parameters of sentencing to defendants and their parents immediately following court, and follows up on sentence completion. She regularly collects extensive data on the entire process. Each defendant is followed through his/her 18th birthday for recidivism rates.  The coordinator may obtain forms from Tamra Venator at the Youth Restitution Program. Her e-mail is yrp@alaska.net. I will also send this e-mail to Tamra, so she is expecting to hear from your enquirer.

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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

We have a parent and teen survey that is sent out to participants upon successful completion of the program. Background checks are periodically done to track recidivism.

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Michele Carlton, Director
Jefferson County Youth Court
c/o Jefferson-Lewis Mediation Center, Inc.
7 Empsall Plaza Courtyard
Watertown, NY 13601
Phone: (315) 785-0333
Fax: (315) 785-0322
youthcrt@imcnet.net

In our county when a youth is arrested, there are only two places for him to go youth court or probation. I send a list of youth's names and birth dates to the probation office at one year after their initial youth court hearing (monthly). They in turn send me a letter stating if the child has been re-arrested within that year. I keep these stats on a calendar year. I am happy to report that as of this year, my recidivism rate is at 2%. 48 juveniles appeared in our court from Jan 2000 - sep 2000 and only one re-offended. Our rate for the end of 2000 (which uses all 1999 cases) was 5.7%. And that was 70 offenders with 4 re-offending.

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Katie Self, President
Florida Association of Teen Courts, Inc.
P. O. Box 48927
Sarasota, FL 34230
Phone: (941) 951-4278
Fax: (941) 951-4277
fatc@gte.net

In Sarasota County we never had the luxury or wherewithal to do much other than a simple recidivism study by random checking with the Dept. of Juvenile Justice database. That always showed a recidivism rate of 12-15%. I always like to point out that, unlike many Teen/Youth Courts, our program does handle offenders with prior delinquency history and is also not limited to misdemeanor crimes. Therefore, we are very pleased with the above-mentioned statistics. The good news is that this summer one of our former student volunteers, Michael Alton, now a political science major at the University of Chicago, served an internship with us and did a major recidivism study. The statistical outcome was consistent with our previous facts but Michael went much more into depth looking closely at certain crimes, etc.   It is quite a lengthy report but we will be glad to forward it to anyone if they contact us at: fatc@gte.net and request a copy. Additionally, The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges Journal, Spring 2001, Vol. 52, No. 2 contains an extensive article titled "An Evaluation of Teen Court As A Juvenile Diversion Program". The article was written by Anthony LoGalbo for his New College thesis. Tony was an employee in our office during his years as a psychology student at New College. We spent a lot of time discussing the importance of understanding what the kids actually get out of their participation rather than just the raw data. We have copies of that report as well and will be glad to forward that upon request.

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Eileen Markiel
Mat-Su Youth Court Secretary
290 E. Herring Ave.
Wasilla, AK 99654
Phone: (907) 373-9045
Fax: (907) 373-9075
mysc@ci.wasilla.ak.us

We have two evaluation forms - one for the defendants to fill out and turn in with their sentence completion packets, and one for our student members who run the courtroom - they evaluation each case, immediately after court, as a group, and write down any suggestions they have for making improvements. If you are interested, I can list the questions we pose to both groups of teenagers.

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Ramon Velazquez, Lead Case Manager
Santa Barbara Teen Court
The Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse
PO Box 28
Santa Barbara, CA 93102
Phone: (805) 963-1433
Fax: (805) 963-4022
teencrt@silcom.com

Teen Court The Santa Barbara Teen Court uses two different models of evaluation. The first model is a Pre & Post Assessment administered to our students; one at the beginning and at the end of the Teen Court experience. The second evaluation is a programmatic one, which is given to the student and parent(s) upon completion of the program. Then, of course, our Probation Department provides recidivism data at the end of each quarter.

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