When she was first asked to create and run a court for teenagers, Sarpy County Diversion Officer Rosalynn Trumm said no, thank you.

Trumm was perfectly happy where she was. The county attorney asked her a second time, and she declined again.

“Not that I didn’t believe in the idea,” Trumm said. “I loved the idea. I was just content doing what I was doing in the diversion program.”

When she was asked a third time, though, she realized there was only one way to get them to stop asking.

“The third time I said, ‘Ah, they’re going to keep asking me until I say yes,’ so I did,” Trumm said with a laugh.

That was in 1995. Twenty-five years later, the Sarpy County Teen Court is still going strong, thanks in no small part to Trumm’s hard work and dedication.

“It’s one of the best things that I’ve done,” she said. “It was my heart and soul.”

The Sarpy County Board of Commissioners honored Trumm this month in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the start of the Teen Court.

“When I set up Teen Court, I really did not have a close reference at all,” Trumm said. “I had to do a lot of research. I ended up going to Des Moines just to take a look at their teen court, which was entirely different from something I envisioned.”

What Trumm ultimately created was a court modeled along the lines of adult county court, but with volunteers from local middle and high school students serving as everything from prosecuting and defending attorneys to jurors to the bailiffs who call for everyone to stand when the judge – usually a Creighton School of Law student – enters the courtroom. Teen Court is a diversion program for teenagers who are charged with first offenses. It adjudicates cases involving shoplifting, criminal mischief, disturbing the peace, minor in possession and other, less serious misdemeanors. Left unaddressed, those behaviors can often mature into more serious offenses down the road.

In order to have their case heard before the Teen Court, juvenile defendants must first admit that they are guilty of the offense they are charged with. Volunteer attorneys then argue the facts of the case before a teenaged jury determines an appropriate punishment, which usually involves community service – such as serving on a future Teen Court jury – as well as writing essays about what they did and why it was wrong and letters of apology to the offender’s parents, teachers, coaches, teammates or classmates.

Leonard Matthias, who has served as coordinator of the Sarpy County Teen Court for four years, thinks the court is educational and informative for all the teens, whether they are an attorney, a juror or the defendant.

“A lot of the kids don’t know some of the things that are against the law, such as curfew violations,” Matthias said. “They don’t know the effects of drugs or alcohol on the body (and) the different types of charges that kids can get charged with.”

After designing what the Teen Court would look like, Trumm had to find volunteers to run it. When she first approached the middle and high schools in Sarpy County to gauge their interest in having their students participate in the program, the response was extremely enthusiastic.

“The response was wonderful,” Trumm said.

She then recruited area lawyers and police officers to help with the training of her young volunteers.

“I wanted it to be a very vivid, realistic training for them, so that they knew what they were going to do,” Trumm said.

Trumm came away from the Teen Court with a great deal of pride in her volunteers.

“When you watch what teenagers do in a courtroom, it’s phenomenal,” she said. “They get the attention of their peers. They’re on the same level with them.

“For example, when they ask a teenager during questioning, ‘Why did you shoplift?’ ‘Well, I didn’t want to pay that amount.’  And a teen would come back with, ‘Do you think any of us want to pay that amount? Wouldn’t we all like to get it cheaper?’ That hits a chord with them.”

The recidivism rate for repeat offenses in Nebraska is about 25% according to a 2018 study by the Virginia Department of Corrections that compared state rearrest rates throughout the country. Trumm kept track of repeat offenses committed by juveniles who had been adjudicated within the Teen Court structure. After the first 1,000 cases, she found that only 88 teens, about 11%, had reoffended.

“If you can have a teenager, you get their attention after the first offense, they’re not going to break the law a second time and maybe a third time,” Trumm said.

Trumm believes that teenagers expect more of one another and respect one another’s opinions more than those of adults to such a degree that, when punished by an adult, the juvenile offender sees it simply as a punitive measure. But when the sentence is handed down by one’s peers, it carries more weight.

“If it’s done appropriately, they’re going to learn their lesson,” Trumm said. “For every kid that we save from a life of minor offenses which then grow to larger ones, we’re doing society a tremendous benefit.”

“The feedback that (the defendants) get from the jury members, we think is instrumental in helping them not break the law again,” Matthias said. “From somebody their own age, it hits home more. It opens their eyes.”

Defendants have told Matthias that they found going through the Teen Court process “nerve wracking, but it’s something that will stick with them, something that will pop into their head when they’re making their decisions, help them make smarter decisions, help them stay out of trouble.”

Trumm is so impressed by her teenage volunteers that she thinks the future is in very good hands.

“If we could turn the world over to them, we would be so amazed at what they could do,” she said.