Nassau pilot program puts law and order in hands of teens, preteens

Hearing the phrase "jury of your peers" might not conjure an image of seventh-graders, but that’s exactly who is stepping in the jury box, along with other courtroom roles, in a Nassau County pilot program that aims to keep nonviolent adolescent offenders out of the justice system.

The Nassau County Peer Diversion Court is a decade-old program that uses high school students as attorneys and jurors for a juvenile respondent who has committed a nonviolent crime. Now the program is being offered to middle-school students, giving them a chance to learn the legal process firsthand.

After an adolescent is charged with a crime, probation officers in the family court system can refer the case to the Peer Diversion Program.

To be eligible for the program, teen offenders must first acknowledge that they did something wrong as related to the charges being brought against them. The accused range in age from 11 to 17 and their offenses involve graffiti, shoplifting, assault without a deadly weapon and car thefts, said Arianne Reyer, special counsel for adolescent and juvenile justice for Nassau’s probation department, which runs the program.

The program is intended as a way for young people in the justice system to be held accountable and learn from their mistakes without going through the formal court process, Reyer said. Of the cases referred to the program, 96% are completed and don’t go to court, she said.

"We realized that young people often listen to their peers a lot more than they listen to adults and definitely feel like they don’t have a voice in the system," Reyer said.

For the court roles, Reyer and program coordinator Michael Jasmin use a combination of school outreach and word-of-mouth to recruit applicants. High school students apply to the program and if accepted get credit for volunteering. The program has a roster of 265 high schoolers, with about 100 of those actively participating, Jasmin said.

The teens serve as clerk, bailiff, juror, defense advocate and community advocate, the latter two similar to the defense attorney and prosecutor in an adult trial. College and law school students are the judges. The students meet after school on a Tuesday with the offenders and the trial is held on that Thursday, with the offender’s parents in attendance.

The clerk and bailiff roles require reading from a script, Jasmin said, but the advocates have to carefully craft opening and closing statements and fine-tune questions for the offenders and witnesses. The goal is to get beyond the police report and get at why the crime was committed and how the situation could have been handled differently, aspects that would likely be deemed inadmissible in a traditional courtroom, Reyer said.

Calling all middle schoolers

Starting last fall, 27 students from Alverta B. Gray Schultz Middle School in Hempstead began participating in the program.

Since trials are held in the Hempstead Village courtroom, there has long been a desire to get more youths from the community into the program, Reyer said. The middle school’s law club provided an opportunity for students already interested in the legal process to learn more. It also allows for younger offenders to have peers their own age in the courtroom.

"We are really excited to get these middle schoolers on board, and they are so enthusiastic about it," Reyer said.

Riley Belle, 12, said her involvement in the law club cemented a desire to become an attorney and so far she loves being in the peer program.

"You get to influence people’s lives and you get to help them become a better person and build on the mistakes they’ve made," she said.

Riley’s mother, Delicia Belle, 42, said she’s excited for her daughter.

"She’s found a passion for it and I’m curious to see where it goes," she said.

The inspiration for the pilot program was Eva Herrera Campos, 14, who in sixth grade began observing trials when her brother, Cesar, was a high school volunteer. She wasn’t interested in the law and wanted to be a veterinarian, she said, but was looking for an excuse to get away from friends who were getting into trouble.

"I just tried to find a safe space I could go to," Herrera Campos said.

She soon became captivated by the process and within six months was begging to play any role, she said. She was so enthusiastic and inquisitive, Reyer said they made an exception and by eighth grade Herrera Campos was brought into the program.

"I genuinely loved it so much I wanted to keep doing it," she said. Herrara Campos is now a ninth-grader at Farmingdale High School and said she wants to become a defense attorney.

The program, which she calls a second home, also gave her confidence and helped improve her public speaking skills, she said.

"When I was in 6th grade I wouldn’t raise my hand even if I knew the answer was right," she said. "Now I try to speak out as much as possible, even if I don’t know if the answer is right."

Her brother is 22 now and is still volunteering with the program, as a judge. He is in his second year of law school at St. John’s University.

"Throughout my time there I’ve seen so many interesting and touching cases where little by little you can see the difference you make in some of these kids’ lives," he said.

Jasmin and Reyer said one of the more impactful parts of the program is that it requires former offenders to be on the jury for other cases as part of their disposition or "sentence."

Jurors get to ask the offenders questions, and Jasmin said he’s often surprised at the insightfulness of former offenders.

"That part of the program I feel has the most impact on kids, because the questions that they ask are really reflective of themselves," he said.

Reyer said it can be empowering and lead to a moment of enlightenment.

"Not only are they learning from their own mistakes, they’re learning from the mistakes of the kids who come after them," Reyer said. "It really empowers them to make a change in the justice system where they often feel powerless and to really have an impact on other kids who might be in a similar situation."

In addition to jury duty, all offenders are required to perform community service. The jury determines the length of service for both, and may impose other sanctions, such as writing apology letters to the victims, counseling, anger management classes or drug evaluations. Once completed, the offender’s case is permanently sealed.

Before the pandemic, the program was handling 80 cases per year but is now spacing them out more, and heard about 50 last year, Jasmin said. Since the program began, it has completed 1,022 cases as of last month. The recidivism rate for offenders in the program is 8%.

"We just hope that when a child leaves the program, we’ve put them in a better place," he said.

The teen respondents often just want to be heard, said Sophia Luisi, 15, an East Meadow High School tenth grader in the program. "I think a lot of them open up more when they see that a person their age is going to be defending them or prosecuting them," she said. "It really just shows that sometimes adults can’t really see the same way that a child can when talking to a child who did something wrong."

By Denise M. Bonilla

denise.bonilla@newsday.comdenisebonilla

Denise Bonilla has worked at Newsday since 2003 and covers the Town of Babylon, including the villages of Lindenhurst and Amityville.