NCJ Number
188005
Date Published
2000
Length
134 pages
Annotation
This report presents findings from an evaluation of England's Youth Court Demonstration Project.
Abstract
The aims of the project were to structure a Youth Court that was more open and that commanded the confidence of victims and the public, to develop processes that engaged young offenders and their parents and focused on the nature of their offending behavior and how to change it, and placed a stronger emphasis on using sentencing to prevent future offending. The project was conducted in two areas: one that consisted of a single court located in the center of a medium-sized town (Rotherham), and the other (Leicestershire) a county with five courts. The evaluation found that generally the project's aims were successfully communicated to those involved, although the objective of using sentencing to prevent future offending was not given as high a priority as the other two objectives. Project objectives were pursued by initiatives designed to increase the court's engagement with offenders and their parents, experiment with various court layouts, encourage attendance by victims and the press, and provide feedback to sentencers about sentencing and other aspects of the courts' work. In response to a questionnaire circulated in mid-1999 (9 months into the project), there were mixed views about its impact, with half of the respondents reporting that it had little impact. The same question was asked 9 months later (February 2000), and the number of those believing the project had little impact had decreased to approximately one-third, and more than half of the respondents believed the impact of the project had been beneficial. This report also discusses the need to view changes to the Youth Court introduced by the project in the context of other developments bearing upon juvenile justice. 16 tables, 2 figures, and appended methodological details