The Baton Rouge Bar Foundation’s Teen Court program has entered into its fourth semester working with the University’s College of Education Counselor Education program to prevent first-time teen offenders from returning to negative behaviors and allow them to focus on positive group work.
The counseling program is a graduate program that prepares students to be mental health and school counselors. At the end of the program, graduate students are placed in a mental health setting, where they complete a long-term internship, said Laura Choate, associate professor of counselor education.
Since last fall, about 25 graduate students and 50 teens have been involved in the program.
“Groups change from week to week depending on when the students decided to attend,” Choate said.
She said the program was designed to help first-time arrested juveniles learn life skills. This diversion program has several parts, including teen court and teen counseling.
In teen court, the juveniles can be sentenced to a number of punishments, such as community service, damage reparation and apology letters by their peers in the program, she said.
In addition to those sanctions, the teens are required to attend counseling sessions and weekly meetings in an eight-week span. Juveniles are only required to attend six of the two-hour sessions, Choate said.
“We find many times that the kids like the groups so much that they want to come back,” she said. “They like learning about things they talk about in the group, and they receive attention from positive role guidance.”
After the teens have successfully completed the program, their first-time offenses will be expunged from their records.
Choate said she hopes the teens’ involvement in the program will prevent any future arrests and allow the juveniles to learn from their mistakes.
“This is a prevention program,” Choate said. “We want to help them learn life