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Where there is crime, there should be punishment. With aims to reduce the amount of classroom time suspended students miss out on, the district approved the Peer Courts program on Oct. 13.
California Community Dispute Services, a non-profit organization that aims to diminish community crimes and individual conflict, civil complaints and suits, introduced Peer Courts. The program was founded in response to students 12-17 years old across the country who have committed an offense in a community or at school, as an alternative to suspension, expulsion, and in some cases, arrest, according to the Peer Courts Web site (www.peercourts.org).
Peer Courts are run by volunteers who hold hearings about the incident and work with the victim, the offender, law enforcement officers, school officials and family members to arrive at a solution. If the offender successfully completes the Peer Courts program, the case is then closed, without further suspension or arrest.
Based on restorative justice values, peer courts practices and sentence recommendations include prevention strategies and discipline training, volunteer services, mediation, restitution and letters of apology, in aims to strengthen safety in the school communities. This program works with both victims and offenders, in which victims discuss their impact and offenders are held accountable for their actions. “This program is an effective way to have their own actions reflected back upon them by their peers,” Psychology teacher and union building representative Ken Tray said. “This allows fellow students to see right into the mirror of their activities."
Because this individualized program allows room for discussion and resolution, schools will effectively reach out to their students, as opposed to instituting a zero tolerance suspension policy, in which a student is evicted from the school site for a certain amount of days.
Suspension has long been known as the traditional resort to rule offenders within schools. It robs classroom instruction time from students who need it most. In addition, because the students may disregard the need of the doing homework during their suspension, they return to school empty-handed, and find themselves falling behind the curriculum, opening them up to a wealth of academic problems.
Traditional school discipline lacks a true solution to the problem. Are kids really deterred by an excuse not to come to school? Are students really threatened by a minor counseling session following the violation? Although school authority hope them to be, the answer is no.
Oakland found success in its Peer Courts program. An article in The Oakland Tribune on Oct. 14 quoted Destine Wivagg, a student who has gone through the Peer Courts system after getting arrested. “The peer-to-peer justice just seems more effective,” she said. “Here, you get a chance to talk about what you did with other youth. If you go to juvenile hall, you don’t really talk about what you did and why you shouldn’t do that.”
It is too simple to punish students under a “one-size-fits-all” punishment. The district is correct to adopt a problem-solving approach, not to condemn students into academic Siberia. |
