Service-Learning Manual for Youth Courts

The number of Youth Courts - also known as teen or student courts - continues to grow across the country. Designed as both evidentary and sentencing hearings, the courts are an alternative to plaving young people directly into the juvenile justice system. Community service is one of the most used sentencing alternatives for these courts, and it usually entails the offender doing service at school, hospital, governmental agency, or non-profit and documenting the hours served to complete the sentence. This type of service benefits the institution served and provides the offender the opportunity to give back to the community in acknowledgement of the wrong committed. Quality community service learning resources are important to help address the goals of the balanced and restorative justice movement and the educational needs of the youthful offender. Service learning offers an opportunity to develop the skills and attitudes of the offender, including academic skills, critical thinking skills, problem solving skills, and a sense of actual accomplishment. Each of these benefits has been identified in delinquency prevention research as an important factor in helping young people develop positive attitudes and behaviors and in decreasing anti-social behaviors among youth. To meet this need, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) of the U.S. Department of Justice has funded CRFC to develop, field-test, and train on a community service learning manual providing 25 examples for use on Saturdays. The examples will be adaptable to meet a variety of sentencing and learning needs. The manual was disseminated at the National Youth Court Conference, April 17-19 in Washington, D.C. and is now available online at http://www.crfc.org/youthcourts.html.