Topic: Screening Youth

Question:  I would like to know how various youth courts "screen" youth for acceptance into the program.  Are youth accepted if they have been previously arrested, but not actually charged with a crime?  Are youth accepted who have been charged with a crime, but the charges were dismissed?  Are youth accepted when they have been through other programs such as truancy diversion?  Are youth accepted if they have previously participated in diversion in your county or any other?  Are youth screened out based on prior CINC charges, gang affiliation, drug use, mental health status or repeat runaways?  Is there any sort of evaluation system or test to determine the likelihood of participating in or completing diversion?

Responses from Coordinators:

College Station Teen Court
Peggy Calliham
Coordinator
City of College Station
PO Box 9960
College Station, TX 77840
Phone: 979-764-3499 Ext. Fax: 979-764-3894
Email: pcalliham@cstx.gov
Website: www.cstx.gov/home/index.asp?page=1445

I do not accept respondents who have had previous tickets in our court or previous run-ins with the law. Sometimes we have to trust what we can see in our system but our Judges know NOT TO refer a second time offender to Teen Court. I am usually able to screen others out at the intake with a few key questions. 

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Pennington County Teen Court
Michele Brink-Gluhosky
Teen Court Coordinator
Pennington County State's Attorney's Office
300 Kansas City Street
Rapid City, SD 57701
Phone: 605-394-2531 Fax: 605-394-2616
Email: michellebg@co.pennington.sd.us 

We have an existing Juvenile Diversion Program and Teen Court is the most serious component. Generally, once we get the case, which come directly from State's Attorney, we mail out a parent intake sheet unless we recognize from the report that contact needs to be made immediately. I do intakes on all kids referred for Teen Court, so I have an intake questionnaire to help me get to know the youth better. Our purpose is to hold the juvenile accountable for the crime, but look at the bigger picture ; school, home life, alcohol/other drug use. We mostly take second time offenders who have not been in the formal court before but might have been in diversion before. However, we do take youth on first offenses if it is a serious misdemeanor crime or if the circumstances are pretty serious or if they were uncooperative with law enforcement. I have only taken a couple of kids that have been on probation before, but that was because they came from out of state and the probation was like a diversion program. Once in a while we will take a kid if they went to court for truancy before and that is their only history but we usually get feedback from the probation officer. Sometimes the kid didn't have to do anything but go to school and that is all the P.O. monitored. Once they go through Teen Court - whether it is first or second offense -- they can not come back through diversion again. Their case is automatically sent to court. 

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Taylor County Teen Court
Toni Matthias
Teen Court Coordinator
224 S. Second Street
Medford, WI 54451
Phone: 715-748-1435
Email: toni.matthias@wicourts.gov

We only accept first offenders in our county. We had one individual that had been on a deferred prosecution at one time and we did let him go through the program. But if an individual has been charged with a crime previously we do not accept them into our program. 

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Willcox Youth Court
Sally White
Coordinator
Willcox Against Substance Abuse
City Magistrate Court
480 North Bisbee Avenue
Willcox, AZ 85643
Phone: 520-384-4777 Fax: 520-384-1141
Email: wasa@qwest.net
Website: http://www.wasaonline.us

Our screening process starts with a referral from any one of the following:
     -City Magistrate or Justice of the Peace
     -Juvenile Probation
     -School principal or Counselor
We accept first time misdemeanors, status offenses, traffic citations and school discipline referrals. The referring agent will note if there have been other problems (i.e. an arrest without being charged or other programs). Generally our Court will accept a case if the defendant has not been charged with the same or similar offense - however any public record will be passed on to the prosecution and defense.

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Lansing Teen Court
Michael Botke
Director
217 South Capitol Avenue - 230
Lansing, MI 48933
Phone: 517-371-2823 Fax: 517-371-2836
Email: teencourtlansing@cooley.edu
Website: www.cacvoices.org

The Lansing Teen Court, Ingham County Prosecutor, Lansing Police Department and Lansing School District Public Safety Department has developed a specific set of guidelines regarding the screening of appropriate offenses and cases for eligibility. The Teen Court Administrator is responsible for further screening candidates based on the following criteria:

1. Offender between ages of 11 - 16 years
2. Parent/guardian/custodian’s willingness to participate and attend hearing
3. Juvenile must admit guilt (no contest)
4. Circumstances involving assault offenses
5. Alcohol and Marijuana related offense(s)
6. No pending felony charges or prior felony adjudication
7. Review of juvenile’s background and pertinent records
9. 8. Information from a personal interview with juvenile and parent/guardian/custodian

Any juvenile committing a crime in Ingham County meeting these criteria can be referred

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Martha Tucker
Court Services Assistant
City of Irving
P.O. Box 152288
Irving, TX 75015-2288
Phone: 972-721-3601 Fax: 972-721-2389
Email: mtucker@ci.irving.tx.us
Website: www.ci.irving.tx.us/courts/welcomet.htm

The Texas statute relating to Teen Court states that “teens 14-17 and those currently enrolled in high school are eligible for Teen Court. They may only appear in Teen Court once every two years.” Therefore, we accept any eligible student (age-wise) who has a Class C misdemeanor citation. They do not have to be a first offender. It doesn’t matter if they’ve participated in another diversion program (as long as it wasn’t teen court in the previous 2 years). We do not screen out gang members, drug users, runaways, etc. Occasionally we even enroll kids who have been sent to the Dallas County Juvenile Detention center on a higher charge and are currently on probation. Probably if you eliminate a lot of the problem kids, your teen court’s success rate would be higher, but we feel that our state law is there for a reason and we try to work with that criteria. 

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Village of Owego Youth Court
Eric Watkins
Unit Coordinator
Youth Services Unit
Owego Police Department
90 Temple Street
Owego, NY 13827
Phone: 607-687-2233 Fax: 607-687-2235
Email: juvenile@stny.rr.com
Website: http://www.owegopolice.org/YSU.html

The Owego (NY) Youth Court’s cases are screened twice - once in the county probation juvenile intake (the youth court director [me] participates in this process) and again in the youth court intake/interview (which is more in depth). Our criteria states that the juvenile should be a first-time offender (ie: with no prior convictions or juvenile diversions), however with that stated I should point out that the director has the discretion to accept cases that may not meet the established criteria. We accept offenders charged with misdemeanors through non-violent/non-drug related felonies. There is currently no formal evaluation system or test in place for our county but if it’s any indication of the effectiveness of our screening process – our recidivism rate since 1999 is only 4.5%.

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Duncanville Teen Court
Olivia Harrington
Teen Court Coordinator
City of Duncanville
P.O. Box 380280
Duncanville, TX 75138-0280
Phone: 972-780-5063 Fax: 972-780-6463
Email: oharrington@ci.duncanville.tx.us
Website: www.Duncanville.com/teen_court.shtm

I work the Municipal Court Juvenile docket and prior to their appearance, I do background checks, checking with a county program and our Municipal Court records. Of course they could have priors in other cities, but the judge just has to ask if they have been in trouble before. You would be surprised how many are truthful. If we find out they have not been truthful, then the judge decides if they still have the Teen Court privilege. Most of the time the judge goes on prior convictions. It is his call.

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Amherst Youth Court
Michael Torrillo
Coordinator
Amherst Police Department
500 John James Audobon Parkway
Amherst, NY 14228
Phone: 716-689-1344 Fax: 716-568-1182
Email: mtorrillo@adelphia.net 

The selection process is handled strictly by the Steering Committee of our court. They circulate applications for memberships in school. Once the applications are returned to me, hand them over to the committee who reviews them. After that process is completed they call the applicants in for an interview. We have taken students into the court that have previously been in front of the court for minor acts. We do not take any convicted youth or drug users, basically because they do not apply. Once they are accepted we run them through our record system to determine their backgrounds. This is all completed before we begin our training.

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Parker Teen Court
Sue Ratcliff
Court Administrator
Parker Municipal Court
20120 E. Mainstreet
Parker, CO 80138
Phone: 303-805-3101 Fax: 303-805-3126
Email: sratcliff@ci.parker.co.us
Website: www.parkeronline.org

I require that all youth fill out an application prior to entry into my Teen Court Program. They are all required to sign an oath of confidentiality and so far I have not had any problems. I only check the background in house. I do have some participants that have been a defendant in my program. My Court is relatively small (about 5000- 6000 total cases a year) and we only handle those referred from my Municipal Court, so they are all juv. misdemeanors . It has been my experience that you are only going to get those kids that are truly interested in the program. Some of them may indeed be those that have been on the defendant side of the process, but have not posed any problem. If they do apply and do not participate for 12 months, I will advise them that they are going to be removed from the active roster. My Judge and are are all for giving most any kid a chance if they are interested.

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Asheboro/Randolph Teen Court Program
Cheryl Benford
Coordinator
Randolph County Government
1520 North Fayetteville Street
Asheboro, NC 27203
Phone: 336-683-8227 Fax: 336-683-8217
Email: clbenford@co.randolph.nc.us
Website: www.randolphteencourt.org

Each Teen Court “screens” youth in different ways. We are currently in the process of screening our youth by not accepting youth who have been in 3 or more fights at school and are being referred to our Teen Court for fighting at school or Simple Affray. We do not accept you who have been previously arrested or previously referred to the program. We do accept youth who have been previously charged with a crime and the charges were dismissed. We do accept youth that were previously on protective supervision for truancy, runaways, etc. We do not accept youth that were previously on a diversion for a criminal offense.

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Cattaraugus County Youth Court and Community Justice Program
Laurie Peterson
Program Coordinator
200 Erir Street
Little Valley, NY 14755
Phone: 716-938-9111 Ext. 2617 Fax: 716-938-6519
Email: LJPeterson@cattco.org
Website: www.co.cattaraugus.ny.us

Screening of Respondents - we receive most of our referrals from Probation. They must first-time offenders, Probation checks for prior incidents before they are referred over to us. We consult with the victims, arresting officers and do an intensive intake with the respondent and their guardian. Recently I had a case in which the parent was very forthcoming with information, so much so, that I knew they needed a higher level of expertise and intervention than Youth Court could provide, so I returned the case to Probation.

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Alice Kenyan
Port St. Lucie Police Department
121 SW Port St.Lucie Blvd.
Port St. Lucie, FL 34984
Phone: 772-871-5001 Ext. Fax: 772-871-5066
Email: grehm@cityofpsl.com

We screen youth for volunteer by having them fill out an application. If they are interested in helping other youth straighten up, then they start as a juror. We can always tell them we don't need them any longer if they are inappropriate. If they feel they are interested in more responsibility, we can have them observe first then participate as a Peer Review Board panelist. Here they have to ask the client/defendant and the parents questions about how the event happened. Similar to the responsibility as juror they then have to compose a list of sanctions. From there if they are interested and we feel they can present themselves well & dress the part, they can train with our Volunteer trial lawyer to be a lawyer (prosecutor or defense lawyer).
In response to getting referrals. We have police officers prepared to write a Notice to Appear (NTA) for Juvenile Court. If the Officer is arresting for a misdemeanor and the youth is admitting & repentant, & the parents and victim are in agreement, the officer can refer youth to us. I would also like to try accepting referrals from Schools for things like Bullying, Threats, and Extortion. We are not there yet. Any other questions, call (772) 344-4087.

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