By Matt Day
In her 10th year of work with Silverton Youth Peer Court, Cynthia Schaeffer is noticing a trend she’s never seen before.
Theft is up from last year. Between January and May of 2008, 33 percent of peer court cases were theft-related, up 10 percent from the same period in 2007. But theft fluctuates year to year, and she isn’t worried about the jump in cases.
Schaeffer said that what does concern her is that for the first time in her experience, youth are saying that stealing is “not a big deal.”
“All of a sudden I’m hearing ‘we didn’t consider what we were doing as theft,’” Schaeffer said.
Silverton Youth Peer Court, overseen by Schaeffer since its establishment in 1999, is a diversionary program that gives youth an alternative to the criminal justice system. In exchange for a guilty plea for minor offenses, youth aged 12-17 can have their cases heard and they are sentenced by a jury of their peers.
Silverton High School Vice Principal Boon Setser said that he seldom sees the attitude in students. “Typically when a person gets caught they show remorse. That’s the norm. It’s rare you’ll see the opposite.”
“The question is,” Schaeffer said, “Are kids saying they are sorry they got caught, or sorry for what they did? When you’re really sorry, no one has to tell you to apologize.”
Of the seven theft cases to pass through the court this year, six involved students at Silverton High School. Schaeffer said all six were thefts of relatively minor items, some as small as cartons of milk from the lunchroom.
Setser said that thefts, no matter how minor, are treated seriously by the administration. “If there’s a law that has been broken, then it is out of our hands,” he said. However, Setser said he doesn’t think thefts have increased at SHS during the last year, his second as head of discipline at the Schlador Street Campus.
“It’s been about average,” he said.
Schaeffer says the increase she sees in peer court reflects a societal trend. “There’s this attitude of what’s yours is mine. Over the last several years, it’s [become] a blurry line,” Schaeffer said.
“We’re a very ‘immediate gratification’ society right now. Theft is increasing among all generations. You didn’t used to steal from the guy who ran the grocery store, because he was your neighbor.”
Schaeffer said that the sense of community isn’t around anymore. “Now it’s ‘how much can we get away with?’”
As for a solution? Schaeffer said it will require a community effort.
She said peer court has a good success rate of keeping kids who come through the program from becoming repeat offenders, but that it doesn’t have the capacity to battle the problem on a large scale.
“Our goal shouldn’t be to change [society], we need to recognize and cope with it in a positive way.”
Setser said the SHS administration does what it can to get the message across to students through a code of conduct, mailed to students at the beginning of each year.
“We do have opportunities to go through behavior and what we expect,” he said. “We’re pretty clear about letting kids know the expectation that we have of students.”
