Increased Collaboration and Focus On Underlying Issues Can Contribute to Improved Outcomes for a Juvenile Delinquency Model Court

Background and Purpose Some of the court interventions that have shown positive results include teen courts (Harrison et al., 2001), community probation (Bechtel, Lowenkamp, & Latessa, 2007) as well as the use of drug courts (Rodriguez & Webb, 2004). The Erie County Model Court redesigned the intake process for all youth in March 2008. The Juvenile Delinquency Team (JDST) was created consisting of probation officers, social workers, mental health and substance abuse professionals to address the underlying issues giving rise to delinquent behavior. The main purpose of this evaluation study was to investigate the extent to which the developments in the Model Court since March 2008 had an impact on the Model Court's two main goals of court improvement (reducing number of days to disposition) and case outcome (reducing penetration into the justice system). Methods A quasi-experimental design was used in a longitudinal study, comparing the achievement of these goals in the two baseline years 2006 and 2007 on the one hand, and between the baseline years and the program years 2008 and 2009. Naturally occurring 100% samples were used from the same time periods in each of the four years, and this resulted in four independent samples: 2006 (n = 190), 2007 (n = 164), 2008 (n = 198) and 2009 (132). It was found that the four groups were matched with regard to demographic characteristics, type of offense and zip code. Results With regard to court improvement, the mean number of days to disposition reduced from 77 in the two baseline years (2006 & 2007) to 63 in the two intervention years (2008 & 2009). The ANOVA again indicated there was a significant main effect for the intervention, F (1, 659) = 18.762, p = .00 in reducing the number of days to disposition. The binary logistic regression indicated that the intervention group was almost twice as likely to have the court disposition in 70 days or less. Reduced penetration was indicated by an increase in ‘adjournment in contemplation of dismissal' (ACD). ACD was received by 18.9% in 2006 and 15.2% in 2007, but increased sharply in the intervention years to 56.1% in 2008 and 69.7% in 2009. The Mann Whitney test indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between the baseline and intervention groups (Z = 11.837, sig. = .000). The binary logistic regression indicated that the youth in the intervention groups were 8 times more likely to received ACD then those in the baseline groups. Additionally, the youth who received ACD in the first intervention year were followed through into the second, and it was found that 11.4% of them had reoffended when compared with 17.2% for the youth who had not received ACD. Conclusions and Implications There is strong evidence that the creation of the Juvenile Delinquency Team and the focus on underlying issues had contributed to the effectiveness of the model court in achieving the two main goals of reduction in the number of days to disposition and reduced penetration.