Youth Court: A Community Solution for Embracing At-Risk Youth — A National Update
These findings and others will be shared in a Capitol Hill breakfast briefing to be held Friday April 15, 2005 from 9:15 am to 11:00 am. American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF), with support from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and the National Youth Court Center (NYCC), will release the report that provides a revealing snapshot of youth court programs nationwide.
The report, Youth Court: A Community Solution for Embracing At-Risk Youth – A National Update, builds upon research previously conducted by the Urban Institute and an extensive survey of youth court programs conducted by the National Youth Court Center. It provides up-to-date data to give policymakers and the public an overview of youth court programs, their characteristics, and benefits. The report’s survey to programs garnered a 40% return rate, which has yielded a successful view of the current youth court landscape. The report’s findings cover topics such as: program completion, cost, returns on investment, impact on youth offenders and volunteers, educational and civic opportunities, program sustainability, and recommendations to policymakers. For example:
- On average, nine percent of juvenile arrests in a jurisdiction are being diverted from the formal juvenile justice system to youth courts;
- 100,000 youth per year are benefiting from their participation in the program as volunteers;
- In 30% of the participating programs, 1 in 5 youth offenders returns to the program as a volunteer; and
- The average costs of youth court programs are estimated as $430 per youth served and $480 per youth successfully completing a sentence. These low operation costs are maintained through the programs’ reliance on adult and youth volunteers.
Building on this positive impact, seventy-one youth court programs received mini grants of $250 to plan and implement National Youth Service Day projects to engage youth offenders along with court volunteers in projects focused on traffic safety issues, mentoring, environmental degradation, and education. These grants were given by the National Youth Court Center with the generous support of the Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention. This grant program is intended to engage young people in volunteer projects and highlight the positive impact that young people have in our communities year-round through community service.
The following Forum panelists will react to the report’s findings:
- J. Robert Flores, Administrator, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice;
- Carl Wicklund, Executive Director, American Probation and Parole Association; Steve Culbertson, President & CEO, Youth Service America;
- Voices from the Charles County Youth Court in Maryland including its program director, Maryellen Krase, an adult judge volunteer, youth respondent, and youth volunteer.
The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) is a non-profit, nonpartisan professional development organization that bridges youth policy, practice and research for professionals working on youth policy issues at the national, state and local levels. AYPF’s events and policy reports are made possible in part by the support of a consortium of philanthropic foundations: Ford Foundation, Ford Motor Company Fund, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GE Foundation, W.T. Grant Foundation, George Gund Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, Lumina Foundation for Education, Charles S. Mott Foundation, Nellie Mae Education Foundation, and others. For more information about American Youth Policy Forum, visit: www.aypf.org.
Funds for the report and this briefing were supported under cooperative agreement award number #2003-MU-MU-K003 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Points of view or opinions expressed in the document are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice or other funding agencies.
The National Youth Court Center (NYCC) serves as an information clearinghouse, provides training and technical assistance through conferences, regional training seminars, onsite technical assistance, and workshops, and serves as an informational clearinghouse for new and established Youth/Teen Court programs. The Center also provides resources to allied agencies that support Youth Court programs, including the American Bar Association, the Street Law, Inc, and The Constitutional Rights Foundation/Chicago. For more information about youth courts and to find one near you, visit: www.youthcourt.net.
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) provides national leadership, coordination, and resources to prevent and respond to juvenile delinquency and victimization. OJJDP supports states and communities in their efforts to develop and implement effective and coordinated prevention and intervention programs and to improve the juvenile justice system so that it protects public safety, holds offenders accountable, and provides treatment and rehabilitative services tailored to the needs of juveniles and their families. For more information about the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, visit: http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org
The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization that examines the social, economic, and governance challenges facing the nation. For more information, visit: www.urbaninstitute.org.
National Youth Service Day, a program of Youth Service America (www.ysa.org) and the largest volunteer service event in the world, focuses attention on the amazing contributions that young people make year-round to their communities while recruiting the next generation of volunteers and educating the public about the benefits of volunteering and doing service-learning. For more information, visit: www.ysa.org/nysd.