Randomly Controlled Trial of Two Court Procedures in Truancy (From Psychology, Law and Legal Processes, P 143-151, 1979, by D P Farrington, et al - See NCJ-70738)

• NCJ Number: 70744
• Author(s): I Berg; R Hullin; R McGuire
• Date Published: 1979
• Length: 9 pages
• Sale Source: Humanities Press, Inc.
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Results are reprted from a British study that compared the effectiveness of two judicial procedures normally used for dealing with truant children.

Abstract

One procedure for handling truants is the supervision order, which entrusts supervision of the truant to a social worker or probation officer; the child returns to court only if the officer wants further action. In the second procedure, referred to as adjournment, the court repeatedly adjourns the case and requires the child to return to court at varying time intervals determined by the magistrate, depending on school attendance progress since the last appearance. If progress is not made in a reasonable time, more restrictive actions may be taken. In comparing the effectiveness of the two procedures, the procedures were randomly allocated in three courts. A total of 96 cases were successfully examined in the three courts. School attendance and convictions for criminal offenses were used as outcome measures. Before court appearances, all subjects had been truant about 75 percent of the time. In the first 6 months after the first court appearance, the mean absence of the adjourned cases had fallen to 35 percent, while the supervised children were truant 50 percent of the time. Before coming to court for truancy the subjects did not differ significantly in the average number of criminal offenses, with about a third of each group having on conviction. In the first 6 months after the initial court appearance, the percentage of supervised cases with at least one new conviction was 33 percent, while the proportion of adjourned children with a new conviction dropped to only 13 percent. Analysis showed that no factor other than the type of court disposition was significant in determining the outcomes. The results of this study would justify intervening in judicial decisionmaking to infuence magistrates to use the adjournment procedure in dealing with truants. Graphic data and references are provided. For related documents, see NCJ70738-43 and 70745-48.