IT’S A GRAY AREA:High school ‘juries’ make difference

Peer Court is an Orange County success story.

All right, I agree that numbers of things with our young people are not going well in our world today, and I have certainly seen enough of that when I was sitting in juvenile court. But people should also be aware that many good things are happening too, and one of them is Peer Court.

We started Peer Court in Orange County in 1994. The purpose was twofold. First it was to provide a means for young people to avoid a criminal conviction if they showed they had learned from their past misdeeds. The second was to provide young people with a chance to focus upon ethics, individual responsibility, the long-range importance of making intelligent decisions, and the fact that they are important role models for others, especially their younger siblings.

Orange County’s Peer Court is a diversion program that presents real juvenile court cases that are carefully screened by the probation department to high school “jurors.” The juvenile subjects must admit the truth of the charged offense and waive their rights to confidentiality of the proceedings. Then they personally appear with at least one parent at a high school outside of their own school district (so that no one present knows them).

The session begins with a volunteer probation officer reading a statement of facts about the case. Then the subject and parent(s) are sworn and given an opportunity to make a statement about themselves, their backgrounds, the offense, or anything they feel would be important for the jury to know about the situation.

An actual judge presides over each of the sessions, and also asks questions both to the subject and the parents. But the program is designed for most of the questioning to be done by theteenjurors.

After the jurors feel they have received sufficient information, they retire along with a volunteer adult attorney advisor to deliberate and formulate a recommended sentence to give to the judge. The attorney advisor tries to keep the jury focused, but does not participate in the deliberations.

When the jury returns, the judge reviews the recommendations and tries to incorporate as many of them as possible into the sentence of the subject.

If the juvenile subject completes the sentence within four months, the underlying offense is dismissed. The only sanction for a failure to complete the sentence is to refer the underlying offense back to the district attorney for prosecution.

Peer Court sentences can include virtually anything except incarceration or the payment of a fine. They frequently include community service, such as picking up trash in a park, graffiti removal or working with the sick, injured or elderly at local medical institutions; individual or family counseling; restitution to the victims of the offense; completion of alcohol or other drug abuse programs; writing letters of apology to the victims of the offense or their own parents, or essays about what they have learned from this experience; being ordered to attend school regularly and attend all classes; and participating as a juror in a future peer court session.

Without a doubt it would be less costly and time consuming to have the probation department implement a diversion program without Peer Court. But even though we have a history of success with the individual juvenile subjects and their parents, the real impact of our program is to pursue those “teachable moments” not only with the subjects themselves, but also with the jurors and other high school students in attendance.

For example, when our jurors ask a parent one of our “sample” questions like “Why don’t you know who your child’s friends are?” both the parents as well as all of the young people in the audience start to focus upon the fact that young people actually expect a parent to parent. We have also had jurors ask the subjects if they want their younger siblings to smoke marijuana. When they say “no,” those in attendance start to focus on the fact that if the older sibling smokes marijuana, no matter what is said, the younger sibling will probably follow the lead of the older. As a result, the students realize they are mentors for their younger brothers and sisters, and the examples they set are important. These are valuable lessons that are often not learned elsewhere.

Petty theft is also a big problem with young people. We frequently ask those subjects if they have ever had something stolen from them. If so, we ask how they felt when the theft was first discovered. And then we will say something like, “Tell the truth, didn’t you want to throttle the person who took that item from you? Do you think your victim felt any differently? Is that what you want to inflict upon other people?”

We also ask the subjects if they actually are a thief. Yes, it is true they stole something on that particular occasion, but did their parents raise them to be a thief? After a few more questions, we center the discussion onto the fact that it really is easy to steal, and most often it can be done without anyone discovering who did it. But people like us do not do that. Why? Not because of possible punishment, but because “I am better than that! Even though no one else will know, I will, and that is not who I am.”

Peer Court also focuses upon other matters of behavior by our young people, as well, such as courtesy and respect. For example, we are still old fashioned enough to believe a man does not sit down before first helping his mother to be seated. If one of our male subjects sits down first, we take the time to make both mother and son stand up again and then be seated the respectful way. Similarly, our judges will make comments like they are sorry the subject does not take these proceedings more seriously — because if they did, they would tuck in their shirt, or wear more appropriate attire, etc. before coming to our peer court hearings.

We also frequently ask the subjects what their lives will be like 10 years from now. Mostly they will respond with the laudable goals of wanting to go to a good college and to have a good job. Then we congratulate them on their goals, but also ask what they are doing now to accomplish those goals. And we follow up with questions like “Do you think that the registrar at any college or a good employer will want to admit or hire a thief? Did you think about that before shoplifting at the department store?” We also ask the subjects what they feel about the eventual success of the people they “hang out with,” pointing out to the subjects the honest statement: “You show me your friends, I will show you your future.”

But we always try to end our sessions on a positive note. In appropriate cases, we tell the subjects we believe this never will happen again, and there is simply no reason why they cannot enjoy happy, successful and satisfying lives. Along those lines we often ask the jurors for a show of hands as to how many of them agree with us that the chances are good for this subject. Mostly by this time the young people in the audience agree with us, and say so.

We are proud of our peer court program, and now it is being presented in 13 high schools throughout the county, including Newport Harbor High School. We have found that the concept of young people delivering justice to their peers works. This program assists young people to confront and address the impact of their behavior upon their victims, their families, their future wives or husbands and future children, as well as themselves. And along the way large numbers of our young people are learning critical citizenship, responsibility and skills. In summary, I believe something good is happening here, and I thought you would like to know about it.