This report provides an analysis of the XXX County Teen Court ...

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Partnership Project 4 An Evaluation Partnership Project to Enhance the State of Maryland’s Capacity to Evaluate Juvenile Justice Programs: Final Report During 2004, the University of Maryland Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice began a project aimed at providing a model for evaluation of juvenile justice diversion projects in Maryland. The project, funded by the Justice Research and Statistics Association’s (JRSA) Juvenile Justice Advisory Council solicitation, was intended to demonstrate the advantages of using a systematic, collaborative, and coordinated approach to the evaluation of one type of diversion project funded through the Maryland State Advisory Council’s Youth Strategies Grant (YSG) Competition: Teen Courts (TCs). This project applied a model of researcher-practitioner collaboration (Program Development Evaluation, PDE; described below) to develop a framework for evaluation in collaboration with the project and county-level practitioners involved in managing the TCs as well as the state-level administrators charged with overseeing the grants. More specifically, the project was designed to (a) help sub-grantees who are the recipients of state juvenile justice funding to develop a logic model including goals, objectives, process measures, and outcome measures; (b) develop a model sub-grantee reporting process that is tied to the RFP process and to the statewide goals and objectives; and (c) provide tailored evaluations of specific diversion programs funded by the State’s YSG program. These objectives were met through four major activities: (1) a series of evaluation workshops for TC sub-grantees during which a plan for evaluation was developed with TC staff, Local Management Board (LMB) and Maryland State Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention (GOCCP) staff; (2) the development of outcome and process instruments keyed to the evaluation plan; (3) the development of a plan for outcome evaluation that would allow for confident conclusions about the effectiveness of TCs for
Partnership Project 5 achieving their intended outcome; and (4) the preparation of a prototype evaluation report containing process data for the first several months of operation of the participating TCs. This report summarizes these activities and provides the prototype evaluation report. In addition, it summarizes lessons learned about the process through which University researchers collaborated with local and state practitioners to develop and implement a rigorous evaluation of the TCs. Before describing the project activities in more detail, the rationale for selecting TCs as a focus and a summary of prior research on TCs will be provided. In addition, the basic evaluation framework that was employed throughout the project will be described. Prior Evaluations of TC TC is a widely expanding diversion program implemented across the United States. In Maryland alone, there are ten operating TCs, with more in the developmental stages. Despite the extreme popularity of the program, there is very little empirical evidence supporting its effectiveness. The two main reasons for this lack of evidence are too few research initiatives and, for the few that exist, the methodologies are poor and the results are mixed. The Urban Institute conducted the most extensive study to date in 2002 (Butts, Buck, & Coggeshall, 2002). The research focused on four different TCs (located in Missouri, Arizona, Alaska, and Maryland), using comparison groups comprised of Department of Juvenile Services offenders. The exception was for the Maryland TC sample, which was compared to a sample from a different diversion program. Results were encouraging for TCs in Alaska and Missouri. In Arizona, TC appeared to reduce recidivism, although the relationship was not significant. Finally, in Maryland, TC faired worse than the alternative diversion program comparison group. Thus, among the several YSG
Page 1 and 2: Partnership Project 1 An Evaluation
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Page 9 and 10: Partnership Project 9 methodologies
Page 11 and 12: Partnership Project 11 Methods The
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Page 23 and 24: Partnership Project 23 Process data
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Page 29 and 30: Partnership Project 29 STEP 2: SETT
Page 31 and 32: Partnership Project 31 STEP 3: DEVE
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Page 37 and 38: Intervention 3: Teen Court Hearing
Page 39 and 40: Intervention 5: Sanction Letter/Con
Page 41 and 42: Intervention 7: Case Closure Descri
Page 43 and 44: Partnership Project 43 5. Of those
Page 45 and 46: Partnership Project 45 2. In 100% o
Page 47 and 48: Partnership Project 47 STEP 7: ASSE
Page 49 and 50: Partnership Project 49 Intervention
Page 51 and 52: Partnership Project 51 STEP 8: IDEN
Page 53 and 54: Partnership Project 53 Appendix A.1
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Partnership Project 55 Appendix A.2
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Partnership Project 61 Appendix B.
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Process Data Teen Court Program OFF
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Process Data Teen Court Program OFF
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Process Data Teen Court Programs YO
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Process Data Teen Court Programs Fo
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Process Data Teen Court Programs Fo
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Process Data Teen Court Programs Ad
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Process Data Teen Court Programs 5.
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Appendix C. Outcome Survey 83
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Please answer the following questio
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Tell us how wrong you think it woul
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Next we would like you to think abo
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How would you be most likely to act
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Now we would like you to think abou
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Standard 1. In 100% of Teen Court c
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Standard deliberate and determine t
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Standard Court Coordinator will not
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Appendix E. Randomization Process T
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