In case you haven’t noticed yet, I’m pretty interested in alternatives to incarceration, alternative sanctions in general, for individuals involved with the criminal justice system. In my elective class this semester, I learned of one alternative program for juvenile offenders that’s effectiveness kind of blew my mind: youth court. What is so incredible about youth court is that its essentially run entirely by young people in the community. I mean, yes, there are adults overseeing things, but the court staff consists of youth court members aged 10-18; the judge, the jury, the prosecutor, the defense attorney – all neighborhood kids.  When we are young, we are taught that peer pressure is an evil bad thing (did anyone else suffer through the DARE program?), but a youth court turns that idea on its head. The premise of youth court is that it harnesses the power of positive peer pressure to teach youth accountability to their community and put an end to patterns of disruptive behavior by addressing underlying causes of deviant behavior.

Youth court procedures vary depending on location but I’ll just give you a general overview on how it works. Youth courts get their cases through referrals from outside sources typically – the police, schools, community-based programs, the criminal courts themselves, social workers like us. After a referral, youth court adult staff members reach out to family and offender to explain the process and then if they choose to participate, schedule a hearing. The hearing is run entirely by youth members of the court. Youth members are teenage volunteers from the community. They receive extensive training in all the court roles. The youth members volunteer for a variety of reasons. One of the members that spoke to my class joined because his mother pressured him to. Another because it would look good on her college applications. The third because she, herself, had been a respondent in youth court and she wanted to give back to the program she credited with changing the course of her life for the better. Youth members act as the judge, jury and lawyers (referred to as advocates) during the hearing. The jury after hearing the case decides on a fair and appropriate sanction for the offender – community service, essays, psycho-educational workshops. Another interesting fact about youth courts is that, despite their inability to really enforce sanctions, they tend to have a high rate of compliance. One youth court in Brooklyn has a compliance rate of somewhere near 80%. Thats much higher than a typical criminal court.

I think this sort of program is a really amazing intervention option for social workers with clientele that includes youthful offenders.  We know that criminal courts don’t have a great reputation for providing services that address the underlying causes of crimes. For a teenager, getting to the cause of their destructive behavior can be particularly life altering. Youth courts provide a great opportunity to do this. They also provide a chance for socialization with peers that offenders might not have otherwise met; these relationships could have a positive impact on a youth. Additionally, from a youth court program, individuals learn more about the law. Maybe they learn how to react when police stop them or how to advocate for themselves to authority figures, all things that can greatly impact an encounter with law enforcement. As the humble social workers we are, we know that can never really know what sort of intervention our clients will respond best to. Some juveniles, like the one who spoke in my class, will benefit greatly from this sort of program, others will not but I really think we have to recognize referral options that may have a meaningful impact on our clients. We can’t  always be the catalyst for change, sometimes we need the community.

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