The Impact of Two Los Angeles County Teen Courts on Youth Recidivism: Comparing Two Informal Probation Programs.

Objective: This study sought to examine the impact of two Teen Courts operating in Los Angeles County, a juvenile justice system diversion program in which youth are judged by their peers and given restorative sentences to complete during a period of supervision.

Methods: A quasi-experimental design was used to compare youth who participated in Teen Court (n=112) to youth who participated in another diversion program administered by the Probation Department (the 654 Contract program) (n=194). Administrative data were abstracted from Probation records for all youth who participated in these programs between January 1, 2012 and June 20, 2014.

Evaluating the effectiveness of the Massachusetts workforce development system using no-shows as a nonexperimental comparison group.

This article examines the effect of the Massachusetts workforce development system on the earnings of disadvantaged adults using nonexperimental data from the late 1990s. The authors construct a comparison sample for program participants using individuals who apply for and are offered services yet do not participate in a training program. They present a series of difference-in-difference estimates that make several alternative efforts to correct for selectivity bias, including econometric models that regression adjust for observable characteristics and fixed-effect models that adjust for time-invariant person effects.