A Peer Jury in the Juvenile Court

Abstract

Using the procedure of informal probation, the juvenile court in Columbia County (Georgia) is experimenting with a panel of age peers who determine case disposition for certain offenses and offenders. The authors describe the innovative progam and present the results of a qualitative program assessment using information from in-depth interviews and questionnaire responses. The data indicate the program is popular with peer jury members, youthful offenders, and parents. The positive nature of the responses suggests that further research be done to determine if peer juries are any more or less successful than other juvenile court programs.

A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Teen Court's Impact on Offending Youths' Behavior

“…Teen court literature is replete with notions of accountability through sentencing (e.g., Godwin, 1997Godwin, , 2002McNeece, Falconer, Bryant, & Shader, 1995) and peer disapproval ("positive peer pressure"; Minor et al, 1999;Shiff & Wexler, 1996). There were initial concerns that young jury members might "go easy" on their peers (Reichel & Seyfrit, 1984), but these have largely been dismissed. Several authors have noted that in many instances, teen court sentences are more severe than sentences given to similar offenders in juvenile court (Godwin, 1997;Reichel & Seyfrit, 1984;Williamson, Chalk, & Knepper, 1993).…”

“…There were initial concerns that young jury members might "go easy" on their peers (Reichel & Seyfrit, 1984), but these have largely been dismissed. Several authors have noted that in many instances, teen court sentences are more severe than sentences given to similar offenders in juvenile court (Godwin, 1997;Reichel & Seyfrit, 1984;Williamson, Chalk, & Knepper, 1993). Tempering sentence severity may be the spirit in which sentences are given.…”

“…Some works document how teen court offenders view their sentences. In a study of Kentucky programs, 84% of offenders rated their sentences as "fair" (Wells, Minor, & Fox, 1998;cited in Butts & Buck, 2000), and in interviews in Georgia and New Mexico, most respondents reported that they felt that the sentences set by the jury were appropriate (Reichel & Seyfrit, 1984;Harrison et al, 2001).…”

Jurors’ narratives of personal experience in deliberation talk

“…Jury researchers have examined the effect of demographic characteristics of defendants (Reichel and Seyfrit, 1984;Denno, 1981;Bray, 1978;Friend and Vinson, 1974), plaintiffs (Kaplan and Miller, 1977), and witnesses (Goodman, Golding and Haith, 1984); variations in types of evidence (Reskin and Visher, 1986;Hepburn, 1980); instructions to the jury (Saks, 1977;Goodman, Greene and Loftus, 1985;Holstein, 1983); the majority-veimv-unanimity decision requirement (Hastie, Penrod and Pennington, 1983); and characteristics of the Jurors and the jury themselves: race (Benokraitis, 1982;Wilder, 1978), gender (Villemur and Hyde, 1983;Levine and Schweber-Koren, 1976;Nemeth, Endicott and Wachtier, 1976), and jury size (Saks, 1977;Roper, 1980;Hastie, Penrod and Pennington, 1983;Tarter-Hilgendorf, 1986). Although no isolable factor has been shown to account for more than eight per cent of the variance in jury verdicts (Hepburn, 1980), research concerning how exogenous factors affect Jurors' decisions is extensive and, some lawyers conjecture, important.…”

Public Opinion of Teen, Classroom, and Formal Court Styles

“…However, these studies have typically involved simple survey measures and non-representative samples, and thus have been limited in their findings.A large number of these studies have been primarily descriptive in nature, intended to describe the functioning of the court rather than to evaluate it. Research evaluating the effectiveness of teen courts has been limited mostly to reporting recidivism rates (Harrison, Maupin, & Mays, 2001;Hissong, 1991;Minor,Wells, Soderstrom, Bringham, & Williamson, 1990;Reichel & Seyfrit, 1995).…”