Robeson County Teen Court and Youth Services

The NC Youth Violence Prevention Center, in partnership with the NC Governor's Crime Commission, seeks to assist victims of crime living throughout Robeson County, NC. Robeson County Teen Court Program is one of the main programs of the NC Youth Violence Prevention Center.

Our program takes a proactive approach towards victim assistance by educating law enforcement, school personnel, and human services professionals about the dynamics of victimization. We serve victims directly by offering support groups and individual counseling following their traumatic experiences. Lastly, we create and utilize individualized case management plans to ensure that the multifaceted aspects of client's needs are met.

The mission of the Robeson County Teen Court program is to assist first time offenders in assuming responsibility for their criminal behavior by holding each offender accountable for their actions and by teaching them to make better decisions in the future through community service activities while making a positive impact on their community.

Teen Court is an alternative, voluntary program, which offers young offenders an opportunity to make restitution for a non-violent offense through community service, specialized classes and jury service, thus avoiding fines and keeping the juvenile’s record clear.

By bringing the teens before a jury of their peers, this program seeks to deter teens from future unlawful behavior, while providing direct experience in the judiciary system and an understanding of their future role as a productive citizen.

Teen Court differs from a normal court process in two distinct ways.

In Teen Court all the roles of the court are filled by teens except for the judge who is either a licensed attorney or actual judge.

The lawyers, bailiff, clerk and jury members are all youth volunteers who volunteer their time to learning about the judiciary system and serving their community.

All Teen Court defendants admit their guilt prior to their hearing. This removes the responsibility of determining guilt from the jury and allows them to critically think about what punishments/sanctions would be appropriate for the offense committed.

On July 1, 2014, NC-ACE staff and program interventions were transitioned to the new non-profit Robeson County Teen Court & Youth Services holding on to the history, talent, experience and legacy of the NC Academic Center for Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention (NC-ACE). Year Four of the NC-ACE project comes to ended on September 30, 2014. As the project began ceasing its operations for program implementation a group of concerned and passionate members of the NC-ACE Advisory Council and the Teen Court Community Advisory Council began planning efforts to sustain the work that was initiated by UNC Chapel Hill. Since the summer of 2013, community members and NC-ACE staff and local agency partners began discussions on the next steps to sustaining the work of NC-ACE. From those discussions a group of community members and NC-ACE representatives established the Robeson County Teen Court & Youth Services (RCTCYS) organization. This organization incorporated as a 501(c)3 in May of 2013 and established a Board of Directors, organization staffing structure, fiscal management processes, By-Laws and several federal and state policies required of a not-for-profit entity.