Giving at-risk youth a second chance

After getting into a fight at school, a 16-year-old boy is charged and convicted. It’s his first offense, but he now has an assault on his permanent record — before he is even old enough to vote.

“Your life shouldn’t be controlled by that stupid decision you made when you were 16 or 15 years old,” said Jon Steiber, a retired assistant district attorney in Robeson County, North Carolina. “You shouldn’t wind up with a criminal record that’s going to follow you for the rest of your life.”

Steiber and many other youth advocates believe there should be an alternative to incarcerating teenagers who commit misdemeanor crimes. In Robeson County, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is helping to provide that alternative through a teen court program.

Teen Court is one of the interventions created by the N.C. Academic Center for Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention (NC-ACE).  The five-year research project, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a multidisciplinary, collaborative initiative between the UNC School of Social Work, the UNC Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRC) and community partners in Robeson County.

For the past four years, UNC-Chapel Hill researchers have been working with Robeson County to reduce youth violence there. Instead of receiving jail time and a criminal record, teenagers who get charged with a first-offense misdemeanor, like fighting at school, go through a teen court hearing. They receive sanctions, which usually include community service hours and classes that range from drug counseling to anger management.  They are also required to participate in future teen court hearings as jury members.

What they don’t receive is a mark on their permanent record.

Jim Barbee, an employee of the UNC Injury Prevention Research Center and the program’s director, said the idea came from community members. Robeson County had a teen court program in the early 2000s, but it was shut down due to lack of funding. When UNC-Chapel Hill researchers asked Robeson County residents what types of programs they wanted to see, teen court was one of the most popular requests, according to Barbee.

In Teen Court all the roles of the court are filled by teens, except for the judge, who is a licensed attorney or an actual judge. That removes the responsibility of determining guilt from the jurors and allows them to think critically about what sanctions would be appropriate for the offense. It’s also a good reminder to the jurors themselves to stay out of trouble.

Brock Chavis, a school resource officer in Robeson County, says he sees a difference in students who go through the program.

“Most of the kids I send to teen court, I never have any more problems with them,” he said. “I would say maybe 5 percent of the kids that go through it will act out again.”