On Good Authority

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Family group conferences
offer promise for juvenile cases
On Good Authority
Vol. 6, No. 7
April 2003
On Good Authority is a periodic
briefing on trends and issues in
criminal justice research and program
evaluation. This report was written by
staff Research Analyst Timothy Lavery.
It is a summary of an implementation
evaluation of the Juvenile Justice
Reform Provisions of 1998 conducted
by the Authority for the Illinois
Juvenile Justice Commission. Copies
of the evaluation are available from
the Authority’s Research and Analysis
Unit.
The Illinois Criminal Justice
Information Authority is a state
agency dedicated to improving the
administration of criminal justice in
Illinois. The basic functions of the
Authority are criminal justice
research, federal and state grants
administration, and information
systems development and support.
For more information, or for copies
of this or other publications, contact
the Authority at (312) 793-8550, or
visit our Web site at
www.icjia.state.il.us.
The evaluation was supported by contract
#98JEFX0017 awarded to the Illinois
Department of Human Services (IDHS) for
the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission (IJJC)
by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
(OJJDP), and by contract #011G0000257
awarded to the Authority by IDHS and IJJC.
Points of view in this document do not
necessarily represent the official position or
policies of IDHS, IJJC, or OJJDP.
Printed by authority of the State of Illinois, April
2003. Printing order #03-217.
.
Rod R. Blagojevich
Governor
Candice M. Kane
Executive Director
ILLINOIS
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
INFORMATION AUTHORITY
By Timothy Lavery
Research Analyst
The Juvenile Justice Reform
Provisions of 1998 added a
purpose and policy statement to
the Illinois Juvenile Court Act adopting
Balanced and Restorative Justice (BARJ)
as the juvenile justice system philosophy.
The BARJ philosophy holds that the
traditional justice system has been too
offender-focused and has not sufficiently
met the needs of crime victims or commu-nities
impacted by crime. According to the
BARJ philosophy, these needs can be met
more effectively by increasing victim and
community involvement in juvenile justice
processes.
Victims and the community have
traditionally been excluded from juvenile
court processes to protect juvenile
offenders. BARJ proponents believe that
more direct involvement in the juvenile
justice system can aid in “restoring”
victims and the community to pre-offense
levels of well-being. Such involvement
allows victims and community members
to: 1) face juvenile offenders and make
inquiries about the offense, and 2) state
how they believe juvenile offenders can
repair harm caused by their criminal
behavior.
There are various BARJ-consistent
program models that allow victims and
community members to directly face
juvenile offenders. Many of these models
adopt a conferencing approach, in which
involved parties meet to discuss a
juvenile offense. One type of
conferencing model is known as family
group conferencing. Family group
conferences include juvenile offenders,
victims, and key supporters of juvenile
offenders and victims. Trained facilitators
guide the discussion, enabling affected
individuals to describe the harm caused
by the crime and what the juvenile
offender can do to repair the harm. At the
end of the conference, participants sign
an agreement describing what the juvenile
offender is expected to do to repair the
harm that he or she has caused. Family
group conference programs are typically
used to divert young offenders from the
formal court system. A typical offender in
a family group conference is a first-time
offender who has committed a relatively
minor offense.
Family group conference programs
are becoming more common in Illinois.
Recently, the Administrative Office of the
Illinois Courts provided family group
conference training and technical
assistance at four Illinois pilot sites,
which now operate programs.
The Authority recently completed an
implementation evaluation examining the
Juvenile Justice Reform Provisions of
1998. The evaluation included a case
study report examining a family group
conference program in Illinois. This On
Good Authority describes information
included in the family group conference
case study report. In addition, the
University of Minnesota School of Social
Work’s Center for Restorative Justice and
Peacemaking recently published The
Impact of Restorative Justice
Conferencing: A Review of 63 Empirical
Studies in 5 Countries. Throughout this
On Good Authority, information included
in the case study report is compared to
previous empirical results, as described in
the review.