The current Teen Court program is a collaboration between the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office and the Detroit Public Schools ("DPS"). As a result, a number of DPS high schools serve as venues for the Teen Court program. In 2015, for example, six DPS high schools (Martin Luther King, East English Village Preparatory Academy, Communication & Media Arts, Western International, Douglas Academy for Young Men and West Side Academy Alt. Ed.) held Teen Court sessions at least one time per week in a classroom at the school. Teen Court jurors are students from the high schools where Teen Courts are held, who have elected to take a course in law which incorporates the Teen Court program into the class curriculum and utilizes it as a teaching tool in conjunction with traditional classroom instruction.

From the juvenile offender’s perspective, Teen Court allows a juvenile a “second chance” to avoid having a juvenile record. Equally important, however, is that the juvenile is compelled to accept responsibility for his/her actions at the “front-end” of the process and receives consequences (community service and restitution, for example) and remedial services (tutoring, counseling, etc.) that are fashioned and explained to him/her in an impactful way by juveniles who are the offender’s true peer group. The Teen Jury’s ability to relate to the youth offender also lends itself to a more meaningful determination of consequences for the youth’s delinquent behavior. Perhaps it is not surprising then, that it has been demonstrated across the country that juveniles whose cases are heard in Teen Court often have a lower recidivism rate than youths who go through the formal court system.

At a minimum, the Teen Court program serves to educate juveniles about the juvenile justice system. However, it certainly does much more than that. It also encourages teens to take an active role in the community in which they live and provides them an opportunity to participate in a responsible and meaningful way to affect positive change in real life cases. Moreover, it provides an opportunity for the jurors to reflect upon, and learn from, the poor choices that other juveniles have made, without having to make the same mistakes themselves.