Teen Court Jurors' Sentencing Decisions

• Author: Edith Greene,Kasey Weber
• Date: 01 September 2008
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016808320339
• Published date: 01 September 2008
• Subject Matter: Articles

Teen Court Jurors’ Sentencing

Decisions

Edith Greene

University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Kasey Weber

Colorado Department of Corrections

Teen Courts provide a forum in which juvenile offenders are sentenced by their peers. This sys-

tem, based on principles of restorative justice, serves as an alternative to the traditional juvenile

justice system. Sentencing options typically include restitution, community service, jury duty,

apologies, attendance at educational workshops, and tours of correctional facilities. Previous

research has examined the effectiveness of Teen Courts but little is known about how sentencing

decisions are made. The purpose of this study was to assess how adolescent jurors make such deci-

sions in one Teen Court program. The authors observe 32 Teen Court trials and deliberations and

question 98 adolescent jurors about their sentencing choices. Results show that the deliberations

are fairly cursory and that jurors have poor recollections of what evidence had been presented.

Still, they put more weight on evidentiary information than on extralegal factors, and were moti-

vated by a desire to rehabilitate offenders and set them on a socially acceptable path—goals con-

sistent with restorative justice objectives on which Teen Court programs are based.

Keywords: juvenile justice; teen court; sentencing

Legal responses to youthful offenders have become increasingly punitive in recent years

despite the fact that rates of juvenile offending have declined steadily since 1994

(Snyder, 2003). In the past decade, many state legislatures enacted laws that treat adoles-

cent offenders much like adults. These laws expand the charges for which juveniles can be

tried and sentenced as adults and lower the age at which this can be done (Salekin, 2002).

At the same time, however, a radically different system of juvenile justice has emerged

for first-time, nonviolent offenders. This system—variably known as Teen Court, Youth

Court, or Peer Court—gives youthful offenders the option of pleading guilty to a misde-

meanor offense, being sentenced by a jury of other teens, and having the charges cleared

from their records on completion of the sentencing requirements. According to the National

Youth Court Center, more than 1,000 Teen Court (the most common appellation) programs

operate in 48 states (http://www.youthcourt.net/national_listing/overview.htm). They are

typically organized by court personnel, law enforcement agencies, schools, nonprofit orga-

nizations, or municipalities (Heward, 2002).

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Criminal Justice Review

Volume 33 Number 3

September 2008 361-378

© 2008 Georgia State University

Research Foundation, Inc.

10.1177/0734016808320339

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Authors’Note: We thank Kari Hayman, Melody Masters, and Laura Schniedwind for their assistance with data

collection and Colorado Springs Teen Court Program Director Patricia Ezell and Executive Director Barby

Schlabs for their support. This research was supported by a grant from the University of Colorado Committee

on Research and Creative Works. Please address correspondence to Edie Greene, Department of Psychology,

P.O. Box 7150, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO 80933; e-mail: egreene@uccs.edu.

Teen Court programs are built on principles of restorative justice and rehabilitation,

rather than on notions of punishment and incapacitation. Important restorative justice goals

embraced by these programs include restoring relations by holding youthful offenders

accountable for their crimes, requiring reparation for damage and broken trust, and reinte-

grating or reengaging young offenders into the community as socially responsible citizens

(Forgays, Demilio, & Schuster, 2004). In terms of rehabilitation, originators of the Teen

Court model reasoned that because teenagers are especially responsive to peer influence, a

system that allows other teens to question and confront youthful offenders about their

behavior and attitudes would have a powerful rehabilitative effect (Weisz, Lott, & Thai,

2002). In addition, teens involved in a judicial proceeding in which their peers determine

the sentence are expected to be less likely to run afoul of the law in the future.

Teen Court programs can have several other objectives as well: reducing caseloads in the

juvenile court system; encouraging a sense of responsibility and an awareness of the con-

sequences of criminal behavior among adolescents; providing an opportunity for defen-

dants, as part of their sentence, to return to Teen Court in the role of jurors and to see the

criminal justice system from the “other side”; and promoting feelings of self-esteem, self-

efficacy, and constructive attitudes toward authority in teenagers. In addition, processing a

youthful offender through Teen Court costs less than does the traditional juvenile justice

system (Shiff & Wexler, 1996). Finally, Teen Court programs often provide closer moni-

toring and more rehabilitation options than traditional juvenile courts (Black, 2000). In

general then Teen Court’s goals are to “rescue” errant youths before they move on to more

serious crimes, to encourage them to understand the consequences of criminal behavior and

take responsibility for their actions, and to direct them to more productive pursuits.

Still, Teen Court programs should not be envisioned as the cure-all for the obdurate

problem of youthful offending (Acker, Hendrix, Hogan, & Kordzek, 2001). Many pro-

grams are still in their infancy and the premises and objectives of such programs remain

largely untested: “Sufficient slippage could occur between basic ideals and philosophies of

youth courts and their attempts to implement those objectives in practice that—much like

the original juvenile court—the performance of these institutions may fall lamentably short

of their ambitious promises (Acker et al., 2001, p. 199).

Our goal in this study was to address Acker et al.’s implication that Teen Court programs

should be examined empirically before they are endorsed as a solution to juvenile offending.

In particular, Acker et al. (2001) suggest that to fully understand the effectiveness of youth

courts, one must understand the role of all participants in the proceedings, including jurors.

The current study responds to that premise and provides an exploratory test of whether the

ideals and philosophies of Teen Court programs are embraced and practiced by the fact find-

ers themselves, that is, whether Teen Court jurors reach decisions that are consistent with the

goals of restorative and rehabilitative justice inherent in the Teen Court model.

This focus is relatively unique. Whereas the vast majority of past research on Teen

Courts has assessed their effectiveness in reducing criminal recidivism,1we opted instead

to examine how important dispositional decisions are made and whether the goals of deci-

sion makers are consistent with those of Teen Court programs, generally. Whether sanc-

tions imposed by jurors promote restorative justice or rehabilitation is, according to Acker

et al., an important question that must be addressed for the effectiveness of youth courts to

be fully understood. Our study, though exploratory and primarily descriptive, tackled that

362 Criminal Justice Review