II. Florida Teen Courts’ Influence on Adolescent Offender Behavior: A Case Study

    In the United States, adjudication of juvenile crime has become increasingly controversial. This fact has, in part, been fueled by a growing body of research suggesting that interactions with the juvenile justice system undermine children’s socioemotional outcomes (Gase et al., 2016). In particular, the system’s emphasis on “containment, confinement, and control” (Gase et al., 2016, p. 2) frequently runs counter to the developmental needs of youth, who are especially sensitive to social influences (National Research Council, 2013). For many young offenders, these conditions stymie future success and opportunity, often prompting continued criminality instead (Petrosino et al., 2010). In light of these circumstances, teen courts have emerged as a promising alternative to juvenile justice system involvement for certain low-level offenders.

The Concept of Teen Court

    The fundamental idea behind teen court is simple: young offenders, diverted from traditional juvenile courts, are sentenced by a jury of same-aged peers (Butts & Buck, 2000). In practice, however, this can seem abstract: while adults oversee all daily proceedings in traditional juvenile courts, youth assume virtually all courtroom roles in teen courts (Bouchard & Wong, 2017). Therefore, teen court is a specialized approach to juvenile justice that is truly ‘for teenagers, by teenagers’.

    By virtue of being developed at the community level, there is some heterogeneity among teen courts of different jurisdictions. However, teen court programs also possess many unifying characteristics, as Bouchard and Wong (2017) and Butts and Buck (2000) highlight. For example, the profile of a typical teen court candidate—a child between the ages of ten and fifteen who is charged with a first-time misdemeanor offense—does not usually vary between jurisdictions (Butts & Buck, 2000). Additionally, participation in teen court is always voluntary, though offenders who forfeit participation are made to undergo processing in the traditional juvenile justice system instead (Butts & Buck, 2000; Bouchard & Wong, 2017). This is because teen courts are “alternatives to formal court processing” but are not part of the juvenile court in most jurisdictions (Bright et al., 2015, p. 135).  Further, youth offenders in a vast majority of teen courts are required to admit to the charges against them prior to participation, after which their criminal record is expunged irrespective of the verdict (Bright et al., 2015). Thus, the most salient aspects of the teen court experience remain relatively consistent among different jurisdictions.

    Teen courts also share similar goals. Notably, by enabling participants to leave without a criminal record (Bright et al., 2015), they afford low-level offenders a second chance. Additionally, by fostering community connection through restorative sanctions like volunteer work (Fisher, 2011), teen courts seek to improve juveniles’ outcomes beyond their interaction with the program (Forgays et al., 2004). This is why they are believed to improve offenders’ well-being and relationships with the law (Kohm & Haefner, 2016)—a reality that starkly contrasts the emphases of traditional juvenile courts.

Purpose of the Study

    Despite wide support for these possible benefits, few studies have investigated why teen courts can produce them (Bouchard & Wong, 2017). In particular, there is a dire need for an empirical review of why teen courts can affect offenders’ behavior (Gase et al., 2016). To fill this gap, the purpose of this qualitative study is to determine why teen court participation influenced short-term behavioral change among first-time misdemeanor adolescent offenders who participated in three geographically diverse teen court programs in Florida.

III. Literature Review

    Existing literature illustrates why teen court’s influence on behavior is worthy of investigation. Although few empirical studies have directly examined this topic (Gase et al., 2016), sufficient information can be gleaned from the available theoretical and substantive evidence to support the existence of a relationship between teen court participation and improved behavior for adolescent offenders.

Turning to Theory

Given limited existing research, theory offers a practical framework for understanding why teen court participation may improve behavior. Indeed, as Butts et al. (2002) of the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center note, theoretical reasoning “allows a researcher to estimate cause-and-effect relationships” without having “outcome data about a particular program” (p. 8). Considering theory, therefore, is paramount to evaluating the relationship between teen court and behavioral outcomes.

    In light of this, many researchers emphasize that only one theory is uniquely suited to the topic of teen court: peer justice (Butts et al., 2002). This theory posits that teen courts’ emphasis on having teenagers administer justice to their peers can improve behavior by eliciting positive peer pressure. In essence, researchers assume that, just as peer pressure can encourage deviant behavior, it can also discourage it (Cotter & Evans, 2018).

    Decades of psychological research corroborate this assumption. For example, clinical psychologists Baruah and Boruah (2016) explain that prosocial peer influence can reinforce positive behaviors. Additionally, as developmental psychologists McConchie et al. (2022) elaborate, this effect is especially pronounced in adolescents. Since the theoretical perspective presented by teen court researchers is grounded in many psychologists’ empirical findings, it serves as a credible explanation for why a relationship between teen court and behavioral change should exist: simply put, peers exert significant influence on young offenders.

Existing Literature

    The peer justice theory, however, must be placed in the context of the existing substantive evidence. Through various perspectives, the extant literature indicates that teen court participation can improve behavior. Yet, although many researchers have referenced the peer justice theory as a possible explanation for this outcome, they have not evaluated why teen court can influence behavior, hence underscoring the gap in the literature.

    The intersection of research by social workers Evans et al. (2016) and criminologists Smokowski et al. (2017) illustrates this idea. These two studies, unlike most at the time, directly analyzed the relationship between teen court and behavioral outcomes. In both cases, first-time offenders between the ages of 10 and 19 were selected for evaluation. By comparing responses to standardized surveys taken before and after teen court participation, the researchers recorded reductions in problematic behaviors, such as aggression and violence, among adolescents who completed teen court. Consequently, the researchers in both studies documented an association between teen court participation and improved behavioral functioning. When taken together, therefore, this existing research bolsters the conclusion that teen court participation may be able to improve behavior. However, the researchers failed to explore why this relationship exists—be it through the peer justice theory or otherwise—because this was not one of their research aims. This highlights the need for additional research.

    Another study, conducted by psychologist Forgays (2008) of Western Washington University, also directly documented behavioral change following teen court participation. In contrast to Evans et al. (2016) and Smokowski et al. (2017), however, Forgays arrived at the same conclusion via observational data. In naturally observing 84 offenders, the study found that many youths who completed the teen court process later returned as volunteers, serving as peer role models to incoming offenders. Since, as Forgays noted, “the most powerful indicator of a [teen court] impact is through self-directed offender behavior” (p. 482), the study interpreted participants’ decision to return to teen court as evidence of behavioral change. Hence, this finding further supports the idea that teen court may influence participants’ behavior. However, as with the research of Evans et al. (2016) and Smokowski et al. (2017), it is not possible to determine why this behavioral change occurred, since Forgays did not investigate its cause.

    Some studies, unlike those previously mentioned, do not explicitly analyze the relationship between teen court and behavioral outcomes, though their data is suggestive of behavioral change and is hence important to consider. For example, research by social workers Bright and colleagues (2013) utilized interviews to evaluate youths’ attitudes toward teen courts. In doing so, they discovered that participants experienced reduced rates of complications with the law, with friends, and at home following teen court. This allowed them to conclude that teen court “may be helping youth curb problematic behaviors” (p. 2). Therefore, although this study did not aim to examine behavioral outcomes, it aligns with the studies conducted by Evans et al. (2016) and Smokowski et al. (2017) in citing a reduction in negative behaviors following teen court participation, and—more broadly—provides additional support for the unifying idea that teen court may improve behavior. Similarly, research sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice and conducted by Butts et al. (2002) documented increased prosocial attitudes and social bonds following teen court participation, which may be implicitly suggestive of behavioral change as well.  

Gap in the Literature

    Thus, while diverse studies have documented a relationship between teen court participation and behavioral change, and theory provides a possible explanation for its existence, virtually none of the extant research analyzes why teen court may influence adolescent offenders’ behavior. By investigating this gap, this study seeks to enhance awareness of how teen courts affect youth, which may substantiate its growing use as an alternative to the traditional juvenile justice system. This is vital in light of the various deleterious effects of traditional juvenile adjudication recorded by prior researchers (Gase et al., 2016).

    Numerous studies have previously highlighted the need for this research (Bouchard & Wong, 2017). Since the existing literature has not yet addressed this need, this study will attempt to bridge the gap in the knowledge by using a case study on participants from three geographically diverse Florida teen court programs. In doing so, it will ask the question: Why does participation in Florida teen court programs influence the short-term behavioral outcomes of first-time misdemeanor adolescent offenders?

Hypothesis and Assumptions

    Based on the study’s central question, the researcher hypothesized that teen court participation influences the short-term behavioral outcomes of first-time misdemeanor adolescent offenders by fostering positive peer pressure. This hypothesis stemmed from the existing literature, which associates teen court participation with improved behavior, and the academic “peer justice” theory, which possibly explains why this relationship exists (Butts et al., 2002). This, however, required the researcher to assume that the previously documented pattern of improved behavior due to teen court participation would hold true in the Florida teen courts analyzed. Nevertheless, given the universality of the goals of all teen courts regardless of jurisdiction (Bouchard & Wong, 2017), this assumption was deemed reasonable.

IV. Methodology

    To answer the research question, a case study consisting of semi-structured interviews and a subsequent thematic analysis was employed.

     Per Yin (2014), a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a case study is an in-depth inquiry into a person or phenomenon within real-life circumstances. For the purpose of this research, the case study was conducted on five first-time misdemeanor adolescent offenders who participated in one of three urban Florida teen courts.

    Several considerations shaped the case study method as the most appropriate for the aims of this research. Primarily, case studies’ aim to understand why social phenomena work as they do (Yin, 2014) aligns closely with the research question’s intention to understand why teen court affects behavioral outcomes. As previously discussed, this question is crucial because it has largely remained outside the purview of the existing literature. Hence, the case study approach was not only tightly linked with the focus and purpose of the research question, but was also essential to filling the gap in the research.

Semi-Structured Interviews

    To fulfill the purpose of the case study, semi-structured interviews—which require participants to answer predetermined open-ended questions (Jamshed, 2014)—were used to collect data. This interview type is frequently employed in social science-based case studies because, unlike more structured interview designs, it enables participants to share their stories with minimal researcher interference, thus facilitating the collection of in-depth information (Campbell, 2015). This, in turn, ensured that the collected data would be detailed enough to demonstrate why teen courts affect behavioral outcomes. Besides the fact that semi-structured interviews have previously been used by teen court researchers (Bright et al., 2015), the choice to use them in this study was primarily justified by their complementarity to the research question and common employment in the social sciences.

Procedure for Semi-Structured Interviews

    Before commencing this interview process, it was first necessary to select a target population based on the research question’s parameters. Given that the study explores why Florida teen courts affect the short-term behavioral outcomes of first-time misdemeanor adolescent offenders, only individuals of ages 10-18 who participated in teen court in one of three Florida locations within the last year were evaluated. Additionally, all individuals had to have committed a first-time misdemeanor offense that warranted teen court intervention.

    It is important to note that the age range for participants was based on legal criteria. Under Florida law, the maximum age of juvenile court jurisdiction is 17 (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2021). Since participants who had completed teen court within the last year were eligible for the study, the upper bound of the age range was then raised to 18. Additionally, since teen courts usually serve children as young as 10 years old (Butts & Buck, 2000), the final participant age range was determined to be 10-18. Hence, this selection criterion ensured consistency with both the research question and existing legal understandings of adolescence.

    Furthermore, it was crucial to include only first-time misdemeanor offenders in the study because, as discussed, most teen courts do not accept other kinds of defendants (Butts & Buck, 2000). Thus, this criterion ensured that research participants reflected the characteristics of typical teen court candidates, enabling some qualitative generalization of results. Finally, research subjects were required to have participated in a teen court in one of three pre-selected Florida jurisdictions within the last year to ensure that they had both sufficient time to reflect upon their short-term experiences and recount them accurately.

    The three teen courts from which participants were recruited were located in southern, central, and northern Florida, respectively, to allow the results to draw from a breadth of experiences. Furthermore, selecting three teen courts was a practical necessity because legal protections of juvenile offenders’ personal information meant that individual teen courts were unable to contact large numbers of prospective participants for the researcher to work with. Thus, the researcher had to purposefully select multiple teen courts to ensure that they would ultimately be able to interview enough participants to generate a substantive conclusion to the research question.

    After securing approval for research from the teen courts (Appendix A), their administrators directly contacted individuals who met the participation criteria. Upon signing consent forms (Appendix B), one to two participants were selected from each teen court, resulting in five research subjects in total. As is suggested by qualitative researchers (e.g., Yin, 2014), this sample size was not established a priori, but was rather determined as interviews progressed. Given that five interviews ultimately allowed study participants to be analyzed in great detail, this sample size was determined to be most conducive to imbuing detail to the collected data. Hence, the chosen sample size was essential to providing a comprehensive answer to the research question.

Upon establishing contact with prospective participants, Zoom interviews were scheduled. During each 45-minute interview, participants were asked 28 open-ended questions (Appendix C), as well as two general questions about their teen court experience and behavioral progression. This enabled interviewees to explain their stories as openly as possible, thereby providing data comprehensive enough to answer the research question. If participants indicated that they experienced behavioral change due to teen court, follow-up questions explored the reasons for such change, thus allowing the researcher to analyze why teen court impacts behavior. The two general questions and examples of follow-up questions are listed in Figure 1 below.

During the interviews, participants were automatically recorded via Zoom, which they assented to beforehand. This ensured that the second stage of the case study could be completed, since interviews then needed to be transcribed.

Thematic Analysis

    The second stage of the case study—thematic analysis—searched for themes that could “capture the narratives” within the data (Dawadi, 2020, p. 62). Specifically, the thematic analysis explored commonalities in how participants believed teen court to have changed their behavior. For this reason, it was the most suitable way to combine the unique experiences of each participant into a common framework, providing results that allowed the researcher to move from understanding why teen court influenced the behavior of one individual to its ability to do so in aggregate.

Procedure for Thematic Analysis

    Consistent with psychologists Braun and Clarke’s (2006) widely employed framework for open-coding thematic analysis, data evaluation was conducted in an iterative process. Firstly, in order to become familiar with the data, the researcher transcribed all interview recordings. To identify commonalities in participants’ interview responses, similar experiences across the transcriptions were then noted. These experiences were marked with “codes”—short annotations that facilitate the theme-generation process (see Appendix D for initial codes). Subsequently, the researcher re-read the transcriptions and grouped complementary codes to reveal initial themes (Appendix E). This was essential to understanding how the teen courts affected individuals and how their behavior fit into broader patterns. Hence, this was done to allow the researcher to determine which specific elements of the participants’ Florida teen court experiences influenced their behavior, thereby providing an answer to the research question. While the potential for researcher error in transcribing interviews was a limitation of this process, the transcriptions were constantly reviewed to bolster the accuracy of the thematic analysis, resulting in five final themes (Appendix F). Lastly, to provide relevant explanations of the results, the themes were named, defined, and paired with corresponding interview quotes (Appendix G).

V. Results

    Following thematic analysis, several themes related to the research question emerged. However, it is first important to evaluate a key finding of the data collection process: that all study participants reported improved behavior due to teen court participation.

    The significance of this finding lies in its alignment with existing research. Since the idea that teen court improves behavior was adopted as the study’s primary assumption, it was necessarily taken as a given before the data collection process. It was, moreover, an important assumption to make, because it allowed the study methodology to be structured such that the pertinent question of why teen court affects behavior could be explored. The finding that this assumption was likely correct thus enhances the validity of both this study’s methodology and the literature it was based on.

    More importantly, the fact that all participants connected improved behavior to teen court indicates that they were qualified to reflect upon why the teen court process spurred this change. An overview of 1-2 transcribed interview statements documenting behavioral changes that participants associated with their teen court involvement is included in Table 1 below, while a full summary is in Appendix H.

With this in mind, thematic analysis was conducted to determine why teen court contributed to participants’ reported behavioral change. As discussed, these themes were developed by analyzing participants’ teen court experiences, which were transcribed from the interviews. When participants repeatedly mentioned a certain behavior-changing aspect of teen court, it was recorded as a theme. This process was constantly revisited to ensure accuracy, which eventually narrowed the total number of themes from seven to five (Appendix E). This is important to consider because, had this study employed a more simplistic thematic abstraction approach, the number of themes may have been overrepresented. The five final themes yielded from the thematic analysis, along with the number of times they were referenced across all interviews, are in Table 2 below.

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Of the five themes above, only three occurred frequently and were present in all interviews (Appendix F). Analyzing these consistently recurring themes in the data is crucial because, in being so highly prevalent, they directly reveal possible reasons why teen court influences behavior. Listed in order of prevalence (Table 2), these three themes are: “consequences to actions,” “empowerment,” and “supportive environment.”

Recurring Theme 1: Consequences to Actions

    The “consequences to actions” theme, identified 20 times across all interviews, was particularly emphasized by study participants. As defined by Table 2, it reflects teen court’s ability to instill accountability within young offenders—be it through the imposition of sanctions, such as community service and required writing of apology letters, or the lengthy teen court process itself. Explaining this, Participant C noted:

“It [teen court] made me realize that stuff is actually serious, because beforehand I really thought I was unstoppable. And then it just hit me, especially because … I was like, ‘Wow, this is serious and it’s definitely my get-out-of-jail free card that one time.’ So it definitely made me … be more smart with the decisions I’m making.”

    As highlighted by Participant C, the fact that teen court brought consequences where there were none before encouraged study participants to curb their engagement in problematic behaviors. For example, Participant D noted how, before teen court, they “didn’t think anything really mattered” because they felt the most they would receive for their misconduct was school detention. Participant A expressed this same sentiment, noting, “I always thought [before teen court], oh, nothing has consequences to anything. Like, I could do anything I want, and I won’t ever get in trouble for it.” Yet, following sanctioning, participants were made aware that their actions carry weight and that their consequences thus cannot be evaded. Echoing this, Participant E stated, “I felt like I got a reality check. Like, if I make a stupid choice, consequences are gonna come … so it pretty much changed a lot of things and my behaviors.” In fact, Participants A, B, and E all specifically used the word “consequences” when describing how teen court curtailed their engagement in the problematic behaviors that led to their initial sentencing. Given that this theme was so strongly unifying across all participant narratives, it indicates that the unique sense of accountability prompted by teen court was a primary reason it improved offenders’ behavior in this study’s context.

Recurring Theme 2: Empowerment

    The “empowerment” theme, identified 18 times, was similarly significant. Across all interviews, this theme encapsulated participants’ perception that the sense of fulfillment, achievement, and personal growth inherent to teen court involvement improves behavior. This is arguably expected because, unlike traditional juvenile courts, teen courts are specifically designed to provide a restorative experience to adolescent offenders (Forgays et al., 2004). In line with this notion, all participants articulated that teen courts’ ability to empower youth is intrinsically connected to its ability to encourage behavioral change.

    Participants A, D, and E, in particular, emphasized this idea by asserting that teen court allowed them to develop habits that equipped them for a “better path” after program completion. Participant D noted how “It definitely gave me, like, I don’t know, like a sense of like I did something of achievement. You know, that I should be proud of myself and that, like, I’m going to start something new.” For some participants, this shared sense of achievement was sparked by their ambition to acquire new skills due to teen court. Participant A, for example, explained that their experience helped them “step out of … [their] comfort zone and speak in front of people,” which allowed them to become “much better of a person” after teen court. Similarly, Participant B noted how “[teen court] can teach people life lessons.” Regardless of the specific kind of empowerment they felt, this shared sentiment across all participants’ narratives allowed them to similarly conclude, as Participant C put it, that teen court can help young offenders “realize that [they] can be better.” Given that this theme was so universally important, empowerment was determined to be another important element of the teen court process that contributed to the participants’ behavioral change.

Recurring Theme 3: Supportive Environment

    A final notable aspect of teen court is the supportive environment it fosters, which was thematically identified 15 times across all interviews. From the existing literature alone, the logic of this theme is rather clear, given that teen courts often stress the importance of the community over the court system (Bouchard & Wong, 2017). More specifically, interviewees explained that teen court connects young offenders who have undergone similar experiences, thus fostering a sense of comfort and encouragement that facilitates positive behavioral change. Illustrating this, Participant C stated, “I think for people that had just gotten arrested or something, hearing other people’s experiences and seeing people get through, it can definitely be something motivating and encouraging not to screw it up.” Likewise, Participant D expressed how such interaction allowed them to feel “kind of heard, in a way, [and] understood,” and that “it was really nice to be around people who … kind of went through something similar.” This sense of support allowed participants to feel that, overall, they could “move on” from their mistakes and “learn something from everything” (Participant C), hence encouraging behavioral change.

    Yet, the creation of a supportive environment is not just limited to the interactions between teenagers; engagement with adults in teen court can also be a means to this end. For example, Participant A noted how their teen court case manager “helped [them] a lot,” saying,

“She was also on top of me to make sure, like, I’m staying in school, I’m doing everything properly, and if I ever needed anything, I could let her know. And it’s almost been a year but, to this day, she’s still been super helpful and supportive through everything.”

    The product of these findings indicates that teen court, as much as it enforces consequences and empowers youth, is also an agent of support. This is why, as stated by Participant B, it can “teach [young offenders] how to love themselves” despite their mistakes, thereby promoting behavioral change. See Appendix G for additional quotes regarding each theme.

VI. Discussion

    In line with the research question, this study aimed to determine why participation in Florida teen court programs influences the short-term behavioral outcomes of first-time misdemeanor adolescent offenders.

Findings and New Understanding

    Given the results of the thematic analysis, the research question can be answered by concluding that teen courts’ short-term impact on behavior may stem from their ability to enforce consequences, empower young offenders, and establish a supportive environment. This is verified by the method-generated evidence in that the most prominent themes arising from the thematic analysis were “consequences to actions,” “empowerment,” and “supportive environment,” which were cited 20, 18, and 15 times, respectively, across all interviews (Table 2). Since these themes were the only consistently recurring ones (Appendix F), the evidence suggests that they collectively represented the most significant reasons teen court improved participants’ behavior. Furthermore, this conclusion emphasizes that the use of a thematic analysis was ultimately justified because it enabled these three themes of importance to be segregated from extraneous themes. Hence, this demonstrates that, within this study’s parameters, Florida teen courts may be able to improve first-time misdemeanor offenders’ short-term behavior chiefly because of these three factors.

    With this conclusion, the initial hypothesis, which postulated that teen court would improve behavior by eliciting positive peer pressure, is tentatively disproven. Although the “peer justice” theme was present in four interviews, it was only referenced five times across them (Table 2; Appendix F). Since the three highly recurring themes were each referenced at least three times as frequently (Table 2), this indicates that the “peer justice” theme was not comparatively recurring enough to be considered a reason teen court influences behavior in the context of this study. This also illustrates why it was important to determine each theme’s number of references across all interviews: had the researcher only relied on the number of interviews each theme was present in, the prominence of the “peer justice” theme may have been overestimated, given that it was present in most interviews but not highly recurring. As such, the new understanding justifies the study’s data analysis choices.

    It is also worth noting that, because this study’s hypothesis was based on existing literature, this conclusion challenges previous researchers’ (e.g., Butts et al., 2002) speculation that the peer justice theory is the central reason teen court participation improves behavior. Although this theory is compelling and partially rooted in psychological research (e.g., Baruah & Boruah, 2016), teen court’s ability to foster consequences to actions in a supportive and empowering way was much more central to the behavioral change reported in this study, which suggests that its importance may have been over-emphasized in the extant literature. Therefore, this study’s conclusion is significant because it offers a new perspective, supported by evidence beyond theory, for why teen court improves behavior.

Limitations

    This conclusion, however, is constrained by certain limitations. Firstly, the study’s small sample size is noteworthy. As discussed, a small subject sample was selected because it ensured that participants’ experiences could be deeply explored, thus allowing the data to provide a detailed answer to the research question. It now appears that the chosen sample size was, indeed, appropriate because, by the fifth interview, themes tended to be highly recurring; that is, “saturation,” the point at which additional data does not produce additional insight (Vasileiou et al., 2018), appears to have been reached. However, without collecting more data, it is difficult to definitively confirm this in qualitative research (Vasileiou et al., 2018). Therefore, had more participants been included in the study, new themes may have emerged. Additionally, themes that were not considered prevalent (such as the peer justice theme) may have begun to appear more frequently. Hence, this limitation makes it important to understand that this study’s conclusion does not provide an exhaustive list of the reasons why teen court may influence behavior, but rather suggests possible reasons based on the most strongly unifying themes discovered across all interviews.

    Additionally, differences between study participants and the larger Florida teen court population limit the conclusion’s generalizability. For example, it is possible that young offenders who were more actively engaged in teen court were more likely to be willing to participate in the study—a phenomenon known as selection bias (Agabegi & Stern, 2008). This may have skewed the study’s results toward illustrating favorable post-teen court outcomes, as has been noted by other researchers (Bright et al., 2015). Consequently, the overall study sample may have been more prosocial, and the reasons teen court influenced their behavior may differ from those of representative Florida teen court populations. Caution should therefore be exercised when applying this study’s conclusion beyond the Florida teen court participants analyzed.

    More broadly, this conclusion can only be generalized insofar as its parameters allow. Since this study analyzed first-time misdemeanor offenders, it is solely relevant to this population of youth offenders—a parameter that was reasonable given that most Florida teen courts only accept first-time misdemeanor offenders. Further, given that only recent teen court participants were analyzed, the conclusion is limited to short-term behavioral outcomes.

Practical Implications

    Despite these limitations, the study’s conclusion yields crucial implications for teen court practitioners, especially since understanding why teen court influences behavior is paramount to providing the foundation for its continued ability to do so. For example, the conclusion that consequences fostered by teen court may improve behavior can encourage Florida teen courts to consistently impose meaningful sanctions on participants, even for minor infractions. These sanctions should be substantial enough to allow young offenders to understand that, as Participant C put it, “stuff can actually happen” when one violates the law. Additionally, the conclusion that teen courts’ emphasis on empowering and supporting youth may improve behavior can encourage Florida teen courts to help offenders build supportive peer networks. This can be also facilitated by adults overseeing teen court, such as case managers, since study participants considered them to play an integral role in providing encouragement and comfort. By capitalizing on these behavior-changing elements of teen court, the development of Florida teen courts can continue to be supported. This is vital because, in substantiating teen court’s use as a diversion model, this study may help mitigate the myriad negative socioemotional effects of juvenile justice system involvement documented by prior researchers (Gase et al., 2016).

Implications for Researchers and New Directions

    Before this study, research associated teen court participation with improved behavior (e.g., Bright et al., 2013), but failed to determine why this may be. By offering three interrelated reasons—consequences to actions, empowerment, and a supportive environment—that teen court may be able to influence behavior, this study narrows the gap in the research. Hence, the study’s chief scholarly implication is an enriched understanding of why teen court may be an effective model for behavioral change.

    Nevertheless, the study’s parameters are also catalysts for new exploration. Future researchers should replicate this study in other states and gauge whether the reported reasons teen court participation can influence behavior remain consistent across these jurisdictions. Moreover, given this study’s emphasis on short-term outcomes, evaluations should assess why teen court participation influences offenders’ longer-term behavioral outcomes, perhaps by analyzing how participants’ understandings of the relationship between teen court and behavior change over extended periods of time. These possibilities would expand the scope of this study’s aims, thereby allowing teen courts in various Florida locations—and, perhaps, the nation—to capitalize on behavior-improving aspects of their programs.

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