Students to start promoting merits of Huntington Youth Court

The Town of Huntington Youth Court will soon start sending students out to promote the court’s mission of offering a different kind of justice system.

The court received a $15,000 grant to launch an ambassador program that will offer stipends to students to speak about the youth court before school groups, community organizations and in libraries.

The money comes from the Long Island Community Foundation.

The youth court was started in 2000 by town board member Mark Cuthbertson, an attorney who represents municipalities, nonprofits and private corporations, as an alternative to the regular juvenile justice system for first-time, lower-level offenders. The program uses the talents and interests of the offender as part of the sanctions, town officials said.

The youth court in 2017 created the student ambassadors program to encourage prospective participants.

“This is a peer to peer outreach to educate people about the program and get them involved,” Cuthbertson said. “This program educates people about the court process and gives youth offenders a chance at having less of a stigma.”

Youth offenders under 16 from Huntington, who have committed their first nonviolent, misdemeanor crime, are given the opportunity to have their case heard by a jury of their peers, Cuthbertson said. Volunteer youth perform the roles of prosecuting and defending attorney, judge, bailiff and jury.

Youth court utilizes restorative justice principles. Cuthbertson said, for example, if a youth is found defacing property with graffiti the sanction could be to teach an art class.

“Restorative justice takes a negative into a positive,” Cuthbertson said.

The youth offenders are recommended through the county probation department, Cuthbertson said. So far, 411 youth offenders have gone through the program with more than 700 students serving as volunteers.

Rachel Friedlander, 16, an 11th-grade student at Cold Spring Harbor High School who has participated in the youth court program since her freshman year, said the program has helped her with her public speaking skills and law knowledge and helped shape her plan to study law or international relations in college. She thinks the ambassadors program will help benefit students on either side of the law.

“The youth court is such an amazing program and helps so many kids to stay out of trouble and juvenile detention and helps get kids on the right path,” Friedlander said. “With the ambassadors program it will expand youth court so we can get way more kids involved and have a greater reach and impact on the community.”

Marie C. Smith, director of communications for the Long Island Community Foundation, said the town’s nonprofit youth bureau applied for the grant at the end of last year.

“Being able to recruit new volunteers is going to really help young offenders and help look at what some of the underlying issues are and avoid repetitions,” Smith said. “All of our grants have that in mind: What’s the impact, what’s the aim, what was the goal here, what are they going to do with it? We are really confident that the Huntington youth bureau is really going to make a difference here.”