Community Panels to Replace Some Juvenile Courts

As early as this spring, Cambridge truants and runaway children may be spared the trauma of juvenile court--instead, they may face panels of three community volunteers each trained in "dispute resolution" who will hear their cases and then refer them to social service organizations for treatment.

Sandra A. Wixted, director of the Children's Hearings Project of the Massachusetts Advocacy Center, said last week the program is an attempt to solve family problems more efficiently, humanely and permanently than the courts.

At the core of the program, Wixted said, will be panels of three specially trained citizens. Cases would be referred to each panel by the police and other social welfare services that currently deal with "status offenders," truants, runaways, and "incorrigibles."

Though Wixted stressed that the project will be limited at first to cases referred by the courts, she added that later the city's schools might send children directly to the program.

Modeled on a Scottish program, the project will operate under the 3rd District Court of Eastern Middlesex County, which includes Cambridge, Arlington, and Belmont.

In Scotland, according to Wixted, juvenile courts have been replaced with similar panels which have enforcement power and are based on the "strong belief that kids need treatment, not punishment."

The mediation will consist of a public session at which the disputants will argue the cases. The panel will then meet with each party privately to try to reach a compromise, before returning to public session to present the final decision.

Volunteers are currently being recruited to serve on the panels. They will be trained through mid-April, when the first cases will be heard.

Even though the project will deal with the city schools and city social welfare organizations, it will not be directly affected by Proposition 2 1/2, the tax-cutting measure passed last November because it is totally funded by private foundations through the next two years.

"Wixted said the Ford Foundation gave the original grant because of interest in applying the techniques of dispute resolution--used until now mainly in settling labor disputes--to social issues.

Wixted presented the project's proposed plan to the Cambridge school committee at its regular meeting last Tuesday. Cambridge Mayor Francis H. Duehay '55 called the plan a "great project," but said he was concerned that city agencies had not been more involved in the project's planning.