The next big thing: teen courts in America.

AuthorEppink, Ritchie
PositionFeature Report on Youth and the Law

It is a simple idea that has inspired a grassroots movement and become the most replicated juvenile justice program in American history. In over 1,200 communities across the United States, in real criminal cases, youth volunteers are serving as the judges, juries, prosecutors, and defence counselors of their peers. Both inexpensive and effective, these teen courts are community-based, volunteer-driven vehicles both for handling juvenile crime--several recent studies show that peer courts can significantly reduce recidivism--and for teaching teenagers about volunteerism, civic participation, and law.

How Teen Court Works

Sarah, a fifteen-year-old growing up in the Town of Colonie, New York, gets caught stealing a purse full of cosmetics from a drugstore near her school. She is arrested and her parents are called to the police station. There, a juvenile services officer learns that Sarah has no prior arrests and, instead of sending her into the standard juvenile justice system, refers Sarah and her parents to the Colonie Youth Court, one of the country's most highly esteemed peer court programs.

An adult coordinator at the Colonie Youth Court meets with Sarah and her parents to confirm her eligibility for the teen court. Because Sarah is under sixteen and the theft is her first juvenile offence and a minor crime, she is eligible. The adult coordinator explains that before going any further, Sarah and her parents must all agree to refer her case to peer court--and Sarah must admit her guilt. By electing to proceed in the Colonie Youth Court, Sarah can avoid contact with the formal juvenile justice system, and like nearly all who are offered the teen court option, Sarah and her parents take it.

After signing paperwork to confess Sarah's guilt and consent to the teen court process, Sarah and her parents meet with her defender, Brandon. He is a teen Sarah's age who learns about her offence and background in order to prepare mitigating evidence and a sentencing recommendation for a jury of her peers. A teen prosecutor, Katy, also investigates Sarah and her crime and will represent the community's concerns before the youth court. Both Brandon and Katy, as well as the judge and the teen court clerk, are high school student volunteers trained by local volunteer lawyers. In the Colonie Youth Court's voluntary eight-week training course, about 120 youth each year receive an overview of the criminal and juvenile justice systems in New York, an...

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