There are 9 Youth
Court programs in Alaska: Anchorage Youth Court, MatSu Youth Court, North Star Youth Court, Kodiak
Teen Court, Nome Youth Court, Valdez Youth Court, Juneau Youth Court, Ketchikan Youth Court, and
Kenai Peninsula Youth Court (with branches in Kenai, Homer and Voznesenka). The United Youth Courts
of Alaska is their statewide organization dedicated to supporting and networking these programs and
there are substantial number of youth involved. The Kenai Peninsula group had five students in
attendance, two from Homer and the others from different spots up the Peninsula. I was able to join
them as a chaperone for the event and participate in all the features of the conference.
Youth Court provides the opportunity for young people who are accused of breaking the law to be
judged by their peers. This program is available as a service to students between the ages of 12 through
18. Youth Court members develop an understanding of law through legal education, Youth Court Bar
Association membership, and actual participation in Kenai Youth Court proceedings.
Ginny Espenshade is the Director of Kenai Peninsula Youth Court and talked to me more about the
organization and the statewide event when we got back to Homer.
“My name is Ginny Espenshade and I started as a volunteer with Kenai Peninsula Youth Court when it
started its first set of classes in 1996. It was modeled after the Anchorage youth court and the Matsu
Youth Court was also starting at the same time. The main ideas behind Youth Court are to give young
people who get in trouble with the law a second chance without having a permanent conviction or
adjudication on their record and also giving their peers a chance to help them and the theory being that
as adolescence get into that stage of their life they're paying more attention to what their peers say
than what adults say. And so this is a way to channel that positive peer pressure. So, then in 1997, Kenai
Peninsula Youth Court got grant funding from the Division of Juvenile Justice in the state and advertised
for a director and I applied for the job. And one of the motivations was how much I had enjoyed
teaching the classes for the Homer youth but also I wanted to make sure that the Homer program was
included in the peninsula wide nonprofit and then I've been doing it ever since then.”
“Ours is the only program in the state that has more than one location. So prior to the pandemic, we
were holding training classes in Kenai as well as in Homer and about every three years at the head of the
bay communities of Voznesenka, Razdolna and Kachemak Selo. And then we also would go to those
communities to hold our cases. We have a lot of support from the school district and we have support
from the court system as far as using their facilities, their courtrooms. We continue to get State funding
from the Division of Juvenile Justice. The types of cases that get referred to Youth Court, a lot of people
are familiar with like a mock trial program where they're hypothetical cases, but in Youth Court, we're
actually dealing with actual cases involving their peers. And so the types of referrals we get are
underage drinking cases referred to us by the district court judges in Homer and Kenai and the other
types of misdemeanors like shoplifting, minor assaults, small amounts of marijuana possession or use
that come to us through the juvenile justice system and in both those matters the students in Youth
Court decide the consequences for the offense with an eye towards restorative justice to help that
youth get back on a better path.”
I ask her to tell me a little more about how the proceedings operate.
“The actual Youth Court proceedings is all student voices. The defense attorneys are students the
prosecutors are students and the judges are students. We partner with the court system and often our
local judges help train our students. There are youth courts all over the country and actually all over the
world now, but Alaska has one of the most broad and deep authorization statutes to the youth courts
that we can determine guilt or innocence with certain types of cases, and we also have the authority in
all of our cases to decide consequences.”
Do you want to talk a little bit about the annual conference trip?
“Sure, the there's a Statewide Association and I like to brag about this because it was created by a
Homer student, Loren Abshure. We went to a conference probably in 1998 or 1999 in Anchorage. And
there was a lot of discussion about how we should have a Statewide Association to network because
once a year was the only time we got together for the conference and Loren stayed up the whole night
developing a proposal and ask for time from the coordinator of the conference and he proposed it and
he said anyone who wants to start this Statewide Association, we'll meet in the adjoining room during
lunch and then he did his senior project the following year setting up this non-profit, the United Youth
Courts of Alaska and it's really fortunate he did because that became a mechanism to ensure that we did
have conferences. We tried to rotate them around the state so every program in the state gets to show
off their community and experience the fun and the it's really hard work to host a conference. So we've
had two in Kenai and to in Homer the last one in Homer was 2013. So we're due to host another one
soon. The conferences bring the students together with their adult directors and board members or
parent chaperones. It's a lot of cross training a lot of networking and then we try to do some activities
where the kids get to know each other. Some of my favorite conferences have been in Nome. We also
had a terrific time in Sitka and we've been to Fairbanks several times, Kodiak several times Valdez twice.
This was just the second time Mat-Su hosted the conference.”
Some of the events the students got to participate in this year were: a keynote address from speaker
Hasan Davis, “Hope Dealer,” viewing the film “Like,” a documentary about finding balance in our digital
world and the unsettling reality of technology addiction, Project Drive sponsored by the Homer Police
Department, a reentry simulation activity and question and answer session with an Alaska state judge
panel.