Youth Court and Second Chances:
Diversion as a Platform for Youth Development
Monday, November 3, 2025 1:00-4:00 pm
Join lawyers, teachers and youth advocates as they discuss youth courts, and their role in giving youth with behavioral problems a second chance. This is an overview of how youth run youth courts can help reform discipline both in schools and in juvenile justice systems. This seminar will introduce you to the empowering benefits of youth courts as well as the challenges advocates experience with implementation. High quality youth courts are restorative, trauma informed. and inexpensive to operate. Learn how positive peer pressure helps children with behavioral problems improve their conduct.
Attendees will learn the latest medical findings on the development of the adolescent brain and how trauma can diminish conflict resolution. Attendees will learn how to integrate youth courts into elementary, middle, and high schools and as a diversionary program for the juvenile justice system. Four unique panels of experts in the fields of law, justice, medicine and education will lead discussions on best youth court practices. Relevant state and local policy reports will be discussed by youth court practitioners, and administrative staff. Attendees will learn how youth courts builds new resources to help troubled children.
Panelists will explore the need for youth courts as a diversionary program to assist behaviorally challenged and/or traumatized youth.
Attorney attendees who register to attend in person or online will receive 3 CLE (1 ethical and 2 substantive), ethics credit only if you attend the full 3 hours, otherwise just substantive credits)
Teachers will receive Act 48 credits (3 hours).
The seminar is hosted at the Delaware County Bar Association and sponsored by the Pro Bono Office of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, the Cahn Collaborative, LEAP 50, Foundation for Delaware County, and the Pennsylvania Council for Social Studies.
1:00 PM-1:40 PM. What are youth courts? Videos of youth courts in action and discussion of training issues.
1:40 PM-2:20 PM. Why do we need youth courts? Trauma and Diversion. Discuss ACES, and adolescent brain development and re-traumatization of youth. 2023 Delco Diversion Report and 2023 PCCD Delinquency Prevention Report
2:20 PM 2:30 PM BREAK
2:30 PM-3:15 PM. How to design and implement youth court? Panelists discuss organizational issues, barriers, sustainability, costs, PA youth court bill, and Street Law YC Collaborative.
3:15 PM-4:00 PM Connecting dots to block the school-to-prison pipeline. Panelists AND attendees discuss next steps and how to move forward with a community response.
Evaluation
10-21 Youth Court Agenda Pittsburgh
Handout 1: Cyc Guide Treatment Punishment (.docx)
Handout 2: PBA Resolution on Youth Court (.docx)
Handout 3: Middle School Youth Court (.pptx)
Handout 4: Chichester Youth Court Training (.docx)
Handout 5: Helpful videos on Youth Court (.docx)
Scenario for Mock Youth Court Roleplaying - Quick Version (.docx)
Youth Court Initiative Donation Letter (.docx)
Youth Court Script (.docx)
Everyone mentioned in this note below is, or has been, significantly involved over the years with trying to bring youth courts to the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS) and across Allegheny County among its 43 school districts.
I have been enjoying connecting with the Youth Court Initiative, a group charged with starting youth courts in schools from grade six through high school in the PPS with Mary Hall, Walt Hales, Anish Badjatia, Reggie Bridges, and Dennis Henderson constituting the group locally. That group will be honored Friday night, October 20, 2023, at the Fort Pitt Museum with the 2023 Pennsylvania Bar Association Youth Court Champion Award. Details on that award program are below.
Check out https://www.pabar.org/site/
Pictured below, in 2017 with their titles at that time, left to right: University of Pittsburgh School of Law Director, Public Interest & Government Relations, Rochelle R. McCain; Duquesne University School of Law Associate Clinical Professor and Pro Bono Program Coordinator Tracey McCants Lewis; PBA Pro Bono Coordinator David Trevaskis; Dr. Darla Gerlach, Fulbright Scholar and teacher, Shaler Middle School; Dr. Kay Atman, Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh School of Education; and Mary Hall, Community Activist. Not pictured, Deborah Sagan, Olweus Bullying Prevention and Project PEACE Trainer.
Some in the picture have moved on--Rochelle McCain is working her magic at Yale Law School today, and Tracey McCants Lewis is now General Counsel for the Penguins. Kay Atman shifted her focus to writing an incredible book that should be out soon, and Debbie Sagan retired and became a Senior Olympian swimmer. Darla Gerlach is still teaching with gusto at Shaler, and David Keller Trevaskis is still at the Pennsylvania Bar Association.
Two other folks to mention, Bridget Gillespie and Joel Graham, have also moved the youth court bar forward in Pittsburgh and beyond. Bridget, a lawyer with the PBA, is a Brashear graduate who worked closely on youth court with Mary Hall prior to the pandemic. Joel Graham is a Brashear teacher who had some great success with youth courts there, as highlighted in this Brashear video.
To finish out the folks to mention on this email, Rob Reed is a longtime United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, now working for the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office. His mandate under the former Pennsylvania Attorney General and now Governor Josh Shapiro was to help spread youth courts across the state, targeting Pittsburgh. Rob was a career prosecutor who became a huge advocate for youth court during the Obama Administration.
Kathy Smith, a professor at Chestnut Hill College and the lead trainer for both events attached, joins Gregg Volz, a youth court advocate working at Harcum College in the Philadelphia suburbs and at Widener Delaware Law School, as part of the Cahn Collaborative, an ad hoc group that honors the greatest poverty law lawyer of the past 60 years, Edgar Cahn.
Youth court is the primary focus of Cahn Collaborative efforts, and that focus incorporates Professor Cahn’s work with time banking, co-production, systems change, and more. Among the myriad accomplishments of Dr. Cahn, he initiated a highly successful juvenile justice-based youth court in Washington, D.C., that diverted 750 juveniles facing felony charges from the system each year during its operation.
There are youth court trainings on 10/21/23 in Pittsburgh and on 10/26/23 in Swarthmore. Both youth court trainings are also tied to other events. The Pittsburgh youth court training, on the 21st of October, a Saturday, is hosted by the Cahn group under the auspices of the Pennsylvania Council for the Social Studies and in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Bar Association. The Pittsburgh event is embedded in the Pennsylvania Council for the Social Studies Conference and will be held in Posvar Hall on the Pitt campus.
The Cahn collaborators are also doing a three-hour free CLE /Act 48 training on youth court 1 - 4 p.m. at the Inn at Swarthmore in Delaware County on 10/26/23 in cooperation with the Delaware County Bar Association and the Pennsylvania Bar Association. Following the youth court event, a reception and awards ceremony will be held at the Inn from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. featuring Edgar's widow, Dr. Chris Gray, one of his sons, Jonathan Cahn, plus folks he touched from Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty to me. James Sandman, President Emeritus of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States, will also give remarks. Check it out at https://pcssonline.org/the-
Registration is required to attend the Swarthmore events or the events in Pittsburgh, but the Swarthmore event has an option to pay nothing for the reception, which is the only cost as the training session there is totally sponsored and thus free to participants. The PCSS event that hosts the awards program and the training in Pittsburgh has no "no-cost" option, but you are free simply to email me that you are coming, and PCSS will waive any fees. Now, if you do have a funding source, both events would welcome donations, which will go to support future Cahn youth court training.
Best wishes and hope to see you soon, in Pittsburgh and Swarthmore!
In Swarthmore, on Thursday, October 26th, there will be two events, from 1-4 p.m. and then 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., celebrating the greatest poverty law lawyer of the past 60 years, Edgar Cahn.
Youth court is the primary focus of Cahn Collaborative efforts, and that focus incorporates Professor Cahn’s work with timebanking, co-production, systems change, and more. Among the myriad accomplishments of Dr. Cahn, he initiated a highly successful juvenile justice-based youth court in Washington, D.C. that diverted 750 juveniles facing felony charges from the system each year during its operation. The Cahn collaborators are doing a three-hour free CLE /Act 48 training on youth court 1 - 4 p.m. at the Inn at Swarthmore in Delaware County on 10/26/23 in cooperation with the Delaware County Bar Association and the Pennsylvania Bar Association.
Following that youth court event, a reception and awards ceremony will be held on the 26th at the Inn from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. featuring Edgar's widow, Dr. Chris Gray, one of his sons, Jonathan Cahn, plus folks he touched from Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty to me. James Sandman, President Emeritus of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid in the United States, will also give remarks. Check it out at https://pcssonline.org/the-