Despite being one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, Marin still suffers from its share of social problems, among them kids who break the law. In West Marin, several community leaders have long puzzled over how to handle juvenile crimes and make the lessons learned stick. They say the answer lies in programs that teach a concept known as restorative justice.
“The purpose of the restorative justice process is for everyone to learn from the wrongdoing,” said Madeline Hope, the director of the Tomales Bay Youth Center. “Instead of slamming the doors to their future by putting them in the criminal justice system, it’s opening a door by helping them recognize what they did wrong and getting them on a path that will allow them to finish growing up.”
Of the many restorative justice programs that have popped up in the county, one of the most effective is the Marin County Youth Court. Run by the Y.M.C.A., it’s held every Thursday evening in the courtroom of the county’s Juvenile Hall complex off Lucas Valley Road. The court uses a peer jury composed of kids aged 11 to 17, many of whom are there to serve jury duty as part of their sentences, and non-offender volunteers. Peer advocates act out the role of attorneys and hand down lighter, more constructive sentences than the county’s Superior Court might issue for misdemeanor crimes.
“No one comes here twice, which is a good sign,” said Ari Wilds, a Woodacre resident and ninth grader at Sir Francis Drake High School who often serves as the court’s bailiff. “Instead of just building negative associations with crime, they actually go home and think about what they did.”
Mr. Wilds is one of many San Geronimo Valley kids whom Susan Shannon, a youth liaison with the San Geronimo Valley Community Center, has encouraged to volunteer for the court over the years. Ms. Shannon estimated that between 15 and 20 valley kids volunteer each year. Several end up getting “hooked” and return to serve repeatedly, she said.
“We have done our best over the years to implement the restorative justice process so that we’re not marking the kid as a bad kid,” Ms. Shannon said. “We’re just saying, ‘What can we do to help you? What can we do to bring you back into the tribe?’”
Saul Martinez, another Woodacre resident and a sixth grader at Lagunitas Middle School, said the court’s effectiveness lies in putting juvenile offenders before a group of peers rather than setting them up to be judged by unfamiliar adults in an intimidating court of law. Not only do the offenders—mildly called “respondents”—learn from their wrongs, but so do the peer jurors and advocates.
“I learned not to go with marijuana and alcohol,” said Mr. Martinez, who serves as a juror. “I’ll never do that in my entire life.”
That’s a significant statement, considering Marin has one of the state’s highest rates of youth binge drinking and marijuana use. According to the 2013-14 California Healthy Kids Survey, which compiles student-submitted data on drug and alcohol use, 41 percent of Marin’s 11th graders drank alcohol within the last 30 days. Thirty-one percent smoked marijuana during that same time period.
Substance-driven infractions account for around 80 percent of the cases brought before the youth court, according to its founder and director, Don Carney. A career social worker in the field of juvenile justice, Mr. Carney started the court 11 years ago after witnessing a Mill Valley student get expelled for bringing a Swiss Army knife to school; soon afterward, while attending a school for kids with truancy, discipline and legal problems, the student became a drug mule for gang members.
Since its founding, the youth court has seen close to 1,000 kids and, up until the past few years, about four cases a week. The court now meets for about one case a week, Mr. Carney said, due to an overall drop in juvenille arrests nationwide.
“There were a lot of kids being locked up for stupid crap,” Mr. Carney said outside the courtroom before a recent hearing. “I looked for a program that would divert kids away from probation.”
That point is significant: convicted kids who successfully complete their youth court sentences will not have a probation or juvenile record. If they had gone through the conventional juvenile justice system, Mr. Carney said, their record would hamper their ability to obtain federal student loans and Pell Grants, making it even harder for low-income students to get set on successful, crime-free path.
The youth court’s merciful leniency hit home last month, when a seven-member peer jury heard the case of a 15-year-old girl who was caught stealing $400 worth of baby supplies from Target for her friend—a new mother—neither of whom had enough money to pay for it all.
“Fifteen years ago, they might have locked her up,” Mr. Carney said. Instead, the jury handed her a sentence—which youth court calls a “restorative plan”—of 15 hours of community service and two jury duties. The process by which the court arrived at that sentence mirrored regular criminal court proceedings in some ways, but differed greatly in others.
For instance, rather than sit silently, the jury members were required to ask the young woman at least two questions; one had to pertain to the crime committed, the other to her family life. It’s this sort of direct, peer-to-peer interaction, Mr. Carney said, that makes the court effective. So effective, he added, that 95 percent of the kids complete their sentences, with only 8 percent recidivism the following year.
“Youth court is not about punishment,” Mr. Carney said. “Our goal is to instruct kids about their lives and the choices they make.”
Many others seem to agree. According to a report released in June by the Marin County Civil Grand Jury, juvenile detentions dropped in Marin by about 85 percent over the past two decades, from 1,674 detainees in 1995 to 253 in 2014. That decline, the jury wrote, was due in large part to detention alternatives such as youth court and other county services.
Meanwhile, as the number of juvenile inmates fell precipitously, costs to operate the county’s 40-bed Juvenile Hall stayed the same, at around $4 million annually. That’s because state regulations require Marin to keep the hall staffed at a minimum of 21 full- and part-time
positions.
With those requirements, the report pegged the average daily cost to the county at just over $900 per inmate. By contrast, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office has estimated that adult inmates housed at the county jail from 2012 to 2013 cost an average of $149 per day.
Ultimately, the grand jury report called for the county to shut down its Juvenile Hall and instead contract with Sonoma and Napa Counties to house juvenile detainees in facilities there. In September, county supervisors flatly rejected that recommendation, saying keeping kids close to their family and community support networks is a significant benefit. The supervisors did, however, agree with the grand jury that alternative detention programs have played a decisive role in draining Juvenile Hall.
But while the county and its civil grand jury disagree over how best to care for troubled kids, local organizations have been taking the lead in restorative justice practices. Ms. Hope of the Tomales Bay Youth Center and Pamela Taylor, a social worker with the Shoreline Unified School District, have plans to create a program for students at West Marin and Tomales Elementary Schools. They hope to mold a forum for dealing with school-related conflicts through the youth center’s Council Circle, a weekly 20-minute meeting for teens to talk about school and community conflicts and to develop a strategy for resolving them.
Currently, Ms. Taylor said, the schools’ principals decide how best to handle conflicts involving students and staff. But with the creation of a group she’s calling the Restorative Justice Circle, Ms. Taylor envisions a scenario in which students themselves might be able to address issues among each other more expediently and without the negative connotation of having an adult administer discipline.
“Really, the best way to implement it is to have the kids take over,” Ms. Taylor said. “With them being in the Council Circle, where they’re already learning restorative justice strategies, they can see better how it would work.”