Whats behind youth courts growth spurt?
When Michael J. Elmendorf II first learned about the concept of youth courts, he wasn’t convinced. “I was pretty skeptical [about] placing kids out of the traditional justice system into a court with other kids,” said Elmendorf, chairman of the New York State Juvenile Justice Advisory Group for Gov. George E. Pataki’s office. But after a site visit to a youth court in Odessa, Texas, he thought the idea would work for New York. “It doesn’t take much time to see that the traditional juvenile justice system does not have the resources to focus on first-time offenders,” he said. Elmendorf was concerned that in the traditional system, “nothing happened to some of the first-time offenders. This, I think, sends a message that the system is not going to really punish them.”…
