Assessing the Impact of Teen Court on the Social Relationships, Behavior, and Mental Health of Rural Adolescents in a Low-Income Violent Community

Background: Teen Court (TC) is a diversion program for first time offenders and is used as an alternative to the traditional juvenile justice system. Rather than establishing guilt or innocence, the goal of TC is to reintegrate offenders back into the community through prosocial sanctions that are assigned by a peer jury (e.g., community service, educational workshops). The majority of existing TC research is conducted in urban areas and focuses on how the program impacts recidivism rates; no research has evaluated how TC effects social relationships across an adolescents’ ecology, improves mental health functioning, or impacts violent behavior. The purpose of the current study was to determine whether participation in TC was associated with improvements in mental health functioning, aggression and violent behavior, family interactions, peer relationships and perceptions of school in a sample of rural youth.

Methods: The current sample was comprised of 392 TC participants, 4,276 non-TC participants from the same county as the TC participants, and 3,584 non-TC participants from a neighboring rural county. Data were collected using the SSP+ prior to participation in TC and six months after sanction completion. TC caregivers also filled out a survey of familism, parent-adolescent conflict, and adolescent aggression, violence, and delinquency. Following multiple imputation and propensity score analysis, difference-in-difference was employed.

 

Results: Relative to youth in both comparison counties, youth who successfully completed TC reported significant decreases in internalizing symptoms (t=-2.67, p=.008, neighboring county; t=-2.85, p=.004, same county), aggression (t=-2.93, p=.003, neighboring county; t=-2.07, p=.04, same county), and parent-adolescent conflict (t=-2.66, p=.008, neighboring county; t=-2.77, p=.006, same county) and a significant increase in school satisfaction (t=3.23, p=.001, neighboring county; t=2.31, p=.022, same county). Compared to the comparison group from the neighboring county, TC youth reported significant decreases in delinquent friends, violent behavior, and school hassles and significant increases in self-esteem. TC caregivers reported significant decreases in parent-adolescent conflict (t=7.35, p=<.001), adolescent violence (t=7.36, p<.001), adolescent aggression (t=9.52, p<.001), and adolescent delinquency (t=8.03, <.001) from pre-test to post-test.

Discussion: Participation in TC was associated with improvement across adolescent ecology including better mental health functioning, more positive school experiences, and improved relationships with parents and peers. Findings highlight the importance of conducting research on how TC improves youth’s lives above and beyond recidivism.