Parents' involvement in youth justice proceedings: perspectives of youth and parents

Summary of Results

Description of Parental Involvement

The present findings indicate that parents' involvement in young people's legal cases may often be quite limited. Indeed, in the present study, a substantial minority of young people had parents who had no or only very minimal involvement in their legal case. Many of these young people had no parental support while they were at the police station, did not see or talk to their parents during their stay in detention facilities, and had no parent with them when they were at court.

Parents may have particularly limited involvement during the early stages of youth justice proceedings. For example, in the present study only a small number of participants requested their parents' involvement at the police station. (Interestingly, few also contacted a lawyer, and only three respondents contacted both.) Very few participants felt that their parents would have been able to provide them with legal advice or support at the police station. Additionally, present results suggest that a significant number of young people may not understand their right to contact a parent or may have difficulties gaining access to their parents when they are at the police station. Finally, it appears that conflicts in the parent-child relationship may often prevent young people from seeking their parents' support during police proceedings. From parents' perspective there was a disconnect between the role they felt they should play at the station (i.e., assistance, support) and the role they actually played. Also noteworthy is that a third of parents interviewed actually felt that they should assist the police when at the station with their child. Overall, both parents and youth felt that parents had very little influence on what happened at the police station.

In contrast to the limited parental involvement reported at the police station, the majority of participants requested their parents' presence during court proceedings and parents were more likely to be present during at least some of young people's court appearances than at the police station. Young people also felt that parents' presence had more influence on court proceedings than at the police station. Interestingly, while more parents indicated that they tried to have influence at court than at the station, many felt that their presence did not, in fact, influence court outcomes.

Predictors of Parental Involvement

Of the youth and parent demographic and cognitive predictors, the only variable to correlate significantly with parental involvement was young people's support for due process rights. This is an interesting relationship. Though it is impossible to infer causality, two possible interpretations are worth mentioning. The first is that parents' involvement in their adolescent child's youth justice experience reflects a valuing of young people and their rights to due process that emerges in young people's support for those rights. The second is that young people who understand and value their due process rights are more likely to seek and receive parental involvement in their case.

While there was no linear relationship between young people's age and parental involvement, when age (under vs. over 16) and involvement (none/minimal vs. some-high) were dichotomized, compared to parents of older youth, a significantly greater number of parents of younger adolescents had some-high involvement in their case.

It was somewhat surprising that no other variables related to parental involvement. In the case of the parent correlations, the very small sample created significant power problems in detecting significance. For example, both parental education level and non-verbal IQ were moderately positively related to parental involvement, though these correlations fell short of the.05 cutoff for significance.

Relationship Between Parental Involvement and Legal Outcomes

Outcomes were examined at various stages of the youth justice process, from the police station through the disposition phase. At the police station, young people who reported being given the opportunity to access support were more likely to contact a parent and/or a lawyer at the station. Contacting a lawyer was negatively associated with answering police questions and making a statement, while parents' presence at the station was positively associated with making statement. Parental presence had positive impact on young people's release from the police station. For those detained, parental presence at the bail hearing was positively associated with release from detention.

At court, highly involved parents came to all court appearances regardless of whether young people requested their presence or not. However, parents whose adolescent children requested their presence at court were more likely to come to some court dates than those whose did not, and conversely, those who did not request parents' presence were more likely to have parents who did not come to any court appearances. It should be noted that in some cases young people may not have requested parents' presence, and parents may not have come, because they were dead, incarcerated, or otherwise unavailable. Given the weight of factors such as youths' record and the nature of the current charge(s) in determining type and length of disposition, it is not surprising that parental involvement was not related to either of these outcomes.