The mission of Juvenile Justice is to:
- hold juvenile offenders accountable for their behavior
- promote the safety and restoration of victims and communities
- assist offenders and their families in developing skills to prevent crime
Collectively the three (3) mission goals are called: Restorative Justice.
These mission goals are consistent with the Alaska Statutory goals to:
- prevent repeated criminal behavior
- restore the community and victim
- protect the citizens from juvenile crime
- develop the juvenile into a productive citizen
- provide swift and consistent consequences for crimes committed
- hold each juvenile offender directly accountable for the offender’s conduct
- require parental or guardian participation and create an expectation that parents will be held responsible for the conduct and needs of their children
- ensure that all parties involved are treated with dignity, respect, courtesy, and sensitivity throughout all legal proceedings
- provide due process where all constitutional and legal rights are recognized and enforced
- provide an early, individualized assessment and action plan for each offender
- ensure the victims and witnesses are afforded the same rights as victims and witnesses of crimes committed by adults
Kodiak Teen Court provides benefits of citizenship to the youth of the City and Borough of Kodiak. In Kodiak Teen Court, we follow and provide a system called Restorative Justice for young, youth offenders. It offers an opportunity for those who make mistakes early in life to constructively pay their debt to the community, the victim, their family, and themselves without incurring a criminal record. It fosters an atmosphere of respect for the law through the principle of judgement of judgement by peers and restitution for wrongs committed.
The Restorative Justice diagram can be seen as a triangle, where each goal is equally important. They are as follows:
- Competency Development
- Community Protection
- Accountability