Jan. 9--BOLIVIA, N.C. -- Kevin Brown of the Wilmington Police Department knows how Brunswick County's Teen Court can change lives.

For him, a former student volunteer with the court, it illuminated a path that drew him from a near total focus on computers and eventually led him into law enforcement. For students who have been sentenced by the court run by their peers, he said, it changed the way they looked at life.

"They were looking to us saying, 'OK, I made a mistake. What can I do now? How can I atone?'" he said Thursday night at a 10-year celebration of the court at the Brunswick County Courthouse.

Teen Court is an alternative system of justice that state law allows for high school students who commit their first misdemeanor. It is a way of resolving a bad situation without a run through the formal court system where penalties for mistakes can seem harsher and the support scant.

Brunswick County was among the first in the state to pioneer the teen court system, and it was because of those first few that the state ultimately wrote laws that allow the system statewide.

Brown was a part of the Brunswick County court's first advisory board, a group that was gathered from the community by Brunswick Communities In Schools, itself then a fledgling organization.

Cynthia Tart, CIS executive director, recalled that Brunswick County school teachers approached the organization to gather a task force to begin the court, which already was working in other counties under the auspices of local legislation that allowed the detour from the regular court system and provided seed money to get started.

High school students who go through Teen Court must agree to stay in school, and they may be sentenced by a jury of other high school students to things such as community service, drug and alcohol assessment and counseling, essay writing on a variety of subjects and letters of apology to parents and victims, said Glenda Ansley, director of the court for nine of its 10 years.

Ansley said the Brunswick County court was the first in the state to bring parents into the system by requiring their active participation for their children to have a hearing in the court. The parents, for instance, may have to attend parenting classes.

Over 700 Brunswick County teenagers have been defendants since 1999, and more than 900 have, like Brown, volunteered for court positions such as bailiffs, clerks, lawyers and jurors.

Two years ago, Ansley said, 75 percent of Teen Court defendants were there for fights. Now, 50 percent have committed drug offenses.

Teen Court is only for first-time offenders, and Ansley said there is just 10 percent recidivism in the first year, a figure that inches up to 15 percent after five years. Appearances for second offenses are in a regular court.

Teen Court is a sentence-only court. The defendants already have admitted guilt.

Since 1999, they have been sentenced to more than 10,000 hours of community service and ordered to attend 1,500 educational seminars on subjects such as conflict resolution, substance abuse prevention, decision-making and drop-out prevention.

In Brunswick County, the Teen Court system has birthed Peer Court, aimed at the county's middle schools, Brunswick County District Attorney Rex Gore said. That court debuted last year at Shallotte Middle School, which will draw the map for other middle schools.

Peer Court deals more with noncriminal things such as truancy and bad behavior, but is also involved with middle schoolers who get into fights, Gore said.

Gore and others who helped start Brunswick's Teen Court worked on the statewide legislation to spread the alternate justice system throughout North Carolina. He said he recognized the potential good the system could have early.

"It didn't take me long in this job," he said, "to learn that the more we educate, the less we incarcerate."

Contact STEVE JONES at 910-754-9855.

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