Jennifer Bartram
By CHARMIAN SCHALLER
Los Alamos Kiwanis
Jennifer Bartram, coordinator of the Los Alamos Teen Court, provided an interesting summary of her work during a Feb. 3 talk to Kiwanis.
She handed out a one-page flyer, which included the following basic description:
“What is Teen Court? Teen Court is a nationally recognized early intervention and restorative justice program for juveniles (ages 12-18). It is a diversionary court that keeps first-time offenders with traffic infractions and misdemeanor offenses out of the traditional court system. They plead guilty, appear before a jury of their peers, and are sentenced. Juveniles brought before Teen Court must accept responsibility for their actions. They face consequences that help them to learn from their mistakes and make amends for the acts they committed. The sanctions are determined by the Teen Court jury, and include community service and jury duty at a future Teen Court hearing. Also possible are sanctions of educational programs, gender-specific programs, and substance abuse prevention workshops.”
Bartram said students participating in the legal side of Teen Court start out as jurors. They serve as jurors four times and then take a class on the process and etiquette of being an attorney, and “shadow an attorney,” before moving up and actually serving as a Teen Court attorney. After a year as a Teen Court attorney, they can move up to judge.
“They’re doing all of this voluntarily,” she said, adding, “I write them letters of reference for college.”
Some of the jurors are volunteers from Los Alamos High School, she said, and some are former Teen Court defendants. In addition, Linda Bennett at Los Alamos Middle School provides extra credit for students who volunteer to serve as jurors.
Most of the Teen Court cases involve traffic tickets or misdemeanors.
“We get a lot of possession of marijuana and possession of (drug) paraphernalia (cases),” Bartram said. She sets the minimum and maximum sanctions possible, and then the jury decides what sentence to impose. One example: 30 to 50 hours of community service.
Bartram said she feels that the number of cases involving careless driving, reckless driving, or following too closely is going up. One question that “attorneys” often ask in traffic cases is, “Did you have any distractions in the car,” such as cell phones?
She feels that the number of battery cases is also up, and she commented that sometimes the cause of the problem is that, “The parents are in trouble.” She said she once saw a father come in drunk, and one mom came in with a black eye.
Based on her experience, she said it seems like the number of young people drinking alcohol and using heroin is increasing. (However, one member of the audience, Morrie Pongratz, noted that recent surveys conducted in the schools here indicate that substance abuse is actually down.)
Bartram mentioned cases involving students charged with breaking and entering after they went into the old steam tunnels under the high school. She also mentioned that in high-tech, defense-oriented Los Alamos County, some “build bombs as a prank.” They need to learn, she said, that, “People can be hurt” by explosives.
“LAPD (the Los Alamos Police Department) helps us out a lot,” she said. Officers provide explanations of the law in many cases. The Juvenile Justice Advisory Board provides snacks. And a small portion of local legal fines ($4 of each ticket) goes to funding the Teen Court. It meets every other Wednesday from about 10 a.m. to about 4 p.m. in the Los Alamos Municipal Courtroom, located in the Justice Center at 2500 Trinity Dr.
Parental consent and participation are required before a case can be dealt with in Teen Court. She noted, “We’re not there to punish the kids; we’re there to help them.” She emphasized that, for those “defendants” who work through all the requirements placed upon them—including subsequent service as a juror—charges are dismissed after 90 days, leaving them with a clean record. Several have even gotten jobs as a result of their community service, she said.
