UROP Project

Assessing the Impact of Florida Teen Courts

juvenile justice; teen court; restorative justice; criminal justice policy

Research Mentor: Dr. Alexandra Cockerham,
Department, College, Affiliation: Interdisciplinary Social Science, Social Sciences and Public Policy
Contact Email: amg08k@fsu.edu
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor): Dr. James Cockerham
Research Assistant Supervisor Email: jmc09m@fsu.edu
Faculty Collaborators:
Faculty Collaborators Email:

Looking for Research Assistants: Yes
Number of Research Assistants: 5
Relevant Majors: Open to all majors
Project Location: On FSU Main Campus
Research Assistant Transportation Required: Yes
Remote or In-person: Partially Remote
Approximate Weekly Hours: 8, Flexible schedule (Combination of business and outside of business. TBD between student and research mentor.)
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link:
Not participating in the roundtable

Project Description

This project aims to examine the effects of teen courts on recidivism in Florida by learning how restorative practices and procedures are implemented across teen courts in our state. Teen courts are a diversion program serving as an alternative to processing juveniles through the traditional justice system. The goal of Teen Court is to address the youth’s behavior through peer-driven consequences and support, without involving the juvenile justice system typically assigning rehabilitative measures such as counseling, restitution, curfews, and community service. By focusing on restorative justice and peer accountability, Teen Court helps youth understand the impact of their actions and encourages positive behavioral changes.

However despite their common mandate, there is variance in the way the process is implemented across counties. This variance offers the opportunity to learn from restorative practices and procedures and the way that they are implemented. Across Florida, teen court programs vary in the way that they structure their sessions, the involvement of parents in the process, the methods through which volunteers are recruited and trained, the extent of cross-sector collaboration between teen courts and other juvenile justice stakeholders, the types of sanctions typically handed out, the number of times a youth can be admitted for services, and the struggles that they face.

In this project we want to learn more about the best practices across Florida teen court by conducting site visits across several teen courts in Florida and through organizing and analyzing field notes.

Research Tasks: We envision that our research assistant would help work on more of the qualitative components of this project. In addition to conducting a handful of site visits and observations, we also have a collection of field reports from prior site visits that need to be condensed and analyzed for insights.

We hope that our UROP research assistant would conduct site visits, synthesize site visit observations to help us recognize patterns and generate theory, and help us review survey results from a prior survey sent out to county teen courts. Research tasks may involve reviewing relevant literature, compiling descriptive information regarding county level teen courts, visiting teen court, and detailing patterns observed.

Skills that research assistant(s) may need: Ability to read academic literature, synthesize field reports, and observe teen court