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Discipline With a Human Face In a drab hospital conference room on Chicago’s West Side, miles away and worlds apart from the Cook County Juvenile Center, an unusual process of justice is being played out. Four people from the neighborhood are questioning a young child about the circumstances of his arrest, and then they will decide his punishment. There are no lawyers, no judges, no probation officers. Just a small group of caring neighbors trying to get to the truth. The program is called Community Panels for Youth, and it is run by the School of Law’s Children and Family Justice Center in six Chicago neighborhoods. The program is based on the legal notion of "balanced and restorative justice,” which holds that justice is best served when not just the victim’s interests are considered but those of the juvenile offender and the community as well. To qualify for a hearing before a panel, the child must be under the age of 17 and a first-time, nonviolent offender. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s office reviews and refers the cases. An eligible offender can elect to go before a panel or take his or her case to court, but a key advantage is that those who successfully complete the panel's program come out of it without establishing a criminal record. "We want to handle it in the community before it gets to court," says Geoff Banks, a project coordinator who supervises several panels. ÒWe think the community can play a meaningful role in developing solutions when a kid commits a first offense.” On this night the four-member panel is listening to an 11-year-old boy talk about his crime. He was walking home from school when a classmate threw a beer bottle at him from across the street. He picked it up and hurled it back just as a police car was cruising by. The first boy ran away, and the police never saw him start the incident. They just saw the boy who was in court hit their car with the bottle. He was arrested, taken to the police station, fingerprinted and photographed. Case closed? Maybe in Juvenile Court but not here. For nearly an hour the panelists — a school social worker, an elementary school teacher, an adult education teacher and a graduate student in business — gently question the boy and his mother. The boy is bright, well spoken and forthcoming. As they probe below the surface, they learn about him as a person and what is going on in his life. His father is in jail. His mother is blind. He was relatively new to the school and hadn’t yet made many friends. He sometimes hangs out with the wrong kids. He likes math, and he’s good at it. He was on the cheerleading team and really enjoyed it but was dropped from the squad because there were too many kids. When he comes home from school he does his homework, with help from his mom, right away. He knows he put a scare into her when he got arrested. When the questioning is complete, the boy and his family leave the room, and the panel starts to weigh the information. One of the conditions of the program is that the child, and a parent or guardian, must sign a contract drawn up by the panelists for each case. The term of the agreement is usually three or four months, and one of the panel members regularly monitors the offender to ensure compliance. As they draw up this boy’s contract, the panel is sensitive about setting the bar too high. Failure to live up to the terms of the contract means it’s voided, and the boy goes back into the court system. After discussion they agree on a four-point program. As atonement for the fear he caused his mother, the boy must clean her room once a week. He also must inform a "trusted person” at the school (in this case his previous grade’s teacher) when he's having a problem with another student. He will enroll in an after-school program that teaches leadership skills and provides mentoring. And he has to promise "to do his best” in math. The graduate student volunteers to supervise this case. She will contact the trusted teacher, work on getting him into the after-school program and keep in regular touch with the boy and his mother to make absolutely sure the contract is being carried out. The mother appears enormously relieved to have the extra set of hands. According to Banks, 80 percent of the contracts worked out by CPY are successful, and most kids who complete the program do not get in trouble again. All the panel members are pulling for this to be one of the success stories. The elementary school teacher on the panel says that through her work, "I see kids at 11 or 12, and they're forming their personality, but they're not yet completely formed. As a teacher, you meet the parents, you see the kid’s environment. Then you see them six or seven years later, and you sometimes see a hardened person. When you knew them earlier, you saw all those good ideas, the sensitivity, the concern, and you ask, ‘What happened between then and now?‘ "I knew that the really punitive nature of the juvenile detention center was not the solution. To have an opportunity to participate before that happens and to have an alternative to that unsatisfactory approach is really important to me.” Maybe sometimes it does take a village to raise a child. - T.S. |
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