Teen courts are becoming a popular mechanism whereby to process youngsters charged with relatively minor offenses. There has been limited systematic analysis of teen courts to identify either their successes or failures. This study examines the teen court of Doña Ana County, New Mexico, including its processes and apparent recidivism rates. The 478 participants were randomly selected from the program and traced through the local Juvenile Probation and Parole Office (JPPO) database. Interviews were conducted with a teen court staff member, JPPO staff members, and former teen court participants. A 25% recidivism rate was found between 1994 and 1998, affected by gender, age, the presence of a prior referral, whether the youngster completed the teen court program, with whom the juvenile resided, and the severity of the jury sentence. The study—the first of its kind for this court—was able to identify some of the successes and shortcomings of this county's teen court.

We conducted an evaluation of an experimental Driving-While-Intoxicated (DWI) Drug Court treatment program operated by a single municipal court. Specially trained court personnel assessed first-time (and, as we found out, some second-time) DWI offenders for symptoms of alcoholism. Once court personnel reached a clinical determination that an individual was an alcoholic, research team members randomly assigned that person to either the treatment program or to a control group receiving normal municipal court processing. A third group consisted of a like number of randomly selected, nonalcoholic, first-time offenders. The conviction records of all three groups were tracked for up to 24 months following the initial DWI conviction. We found significantly fewer alcohol-related and other serious crime reconvictions for the nonalcoholic group. Among those determined to be alcoholic, the treatment group had significantly fewer reconvictions than the control group. We address the implications and limitations of our findings for similar experimental studies in criminal justice and for DWI Drug Court treatment programs.

This research examines the legal processing of girls in the context of intake workers' perceptions of girls' delinquency in a large southwestern county in which Mexican-Americans are the numerical majority. Using official records and in-depth interviews, girls' delinquency and the complexities of intake workers' perceptions of gender, ethnicity and social class are examined. With the exception of a low number of referrals for drugs, girls were referred for those offenses most common among girls nationally: shoplifting, status offenses, and simple assaults. Juvenile Probation and Parole Officers (JPPOs) explained girls' referrals in the context of family and other relationships. Girls were described as sexualized and manipulative. JPPOs identified white girls as privileged and linked this privilege to conflict with parents. Latinas were described as experiencing the most pressure toward traditional gender roles and a sex-based double standard. The implications of these data for juvenile justice decision-making and policy in this jurisdiction are discussed.

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