Getting into trouble turned out to be a blessing for Kristen Larkin. A prank two years ago landed the Parkland teen in a diversion program run by the Pierce County Juvenile Court. Instead of being prosecuted for two crimes, Larkin, then 16, worked with a group of volunteers to set her life on a better path.

Now, instead of carrying a criminal record, Larkin is set to graduate from the Running Start program at Pierce College and plans to pursue her bachelor’s degree at a four-year university.

She credits the diversion program and its community accountability boards with helping to make it happen.

“It kind of changed my life,” she said during a recent interview.

With the number of referrals to diversion on the upswing, juvenile court officials last month added a 10th accountability board in Tacoma to keep up with demand. There now are boards operating in Sumner, Puyallup, Lakewood, University Place and Tacoma.

It is the first board added since 2005, when court officials started a new one in University Place, said Lin Spellman, the juvenile court’s volunteer services manager.

The boards are staffed by citizen volunteers, including teenagers, who work with youthful offenders to craft a plan for atoning for their mistakes while also improving themselves.

The kid gets a chance to keep a crime off his or her record. The county saves money by keeping cases out of court and kids out of detention.

“It keeps a lot of kids out of the criminal justice system,” Spellman said.

Fred Wist supervises the juvenile division of the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.

“If we didn’t have that tool available to us, it would more than double the caseload our office would have to prosecute,” Wist said. “That would be an impossibility under our current staffing level.”

Law enforcement agencies sent about 6,000 cases to juvenile court in 2008, more than 45 percent of which were recommended for diversion.

First-time and some second-time juvenile offenders facing misdemeanor charges can qualify for diversion. There is a $125 fee for a first-time offender and a $150 fee for a second-time offender. Money raised helps defray the costs of the program. The county budgeted $540,630 for the program this year.

A typical diversion candidate is between 8 and 17 and is accused of crimes such as shoplifting, possessing alcohol or marijuana, malicious mischief or trespassing, according to juvenile court records.

Instead of going before a judge, the youth and his or her parent or guardian work with a community accountability board to resolve the case.

A Monday night meeting at the Remann Hall juvenile detention center was typical.

Volunteers Giulietta Oda, Michael Mace, Erika Hathaway and Bonita Lee met with a 16-year-old Tacoma boy accused of spray-painting graffiti on a bridge outside Auburn. The boy’s parents also attended the meeting.

The News Tribune agreed not to publish his name in exchange for the opportunity to observe what is usually a confidential meeting.

The meeting was part confessional – the boy had to tell the board about the crime; part motivational – board members urged him to seek alternatives for his artistic abilities and pursue his dream of attending the University of Washington; and part penal – they assigned him to do 32 hours of community service cleaning up graffiti and to attend a two-day class on decision-making.

“Choices you make now can open the doors to the University of Washington or close the doors to the University of Washington completely,” Lee told the boy.

At the end of the hour-long meeting, the boy agreed to abide by the terms of his so-called “diversion agreement.”

“I don’t want my parents to be in this situation again,” he said.

Diversion agreements can include participating in community service, referrals to counseling or substance-abuse treatment, research reports, mandatory school attendance, educational classes, restitution to a victim or a fine of up to $100.

Carolyn Weisz is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Puget Sound who has served as a community accountability board volunteer for three years.

“We can get kind of creative,” Weisz said during a recent interview.

She recalled a case of a boy who was interested in becoming a mechanic. The board in charge of his case required him to do a research project on the subject as part of his agreement.

“For a lot of these kids, they’re getting in trouble because they don’t have a lot of goals,” Weisz said.

Kids who don’t successfully complete their diversion agreements face prosecution in juvenile court. That doesn’t happen often, according to Spellman.

About 70 percent of the children who successfully complete their agreements don’t re-offend as juveniles, she said, and more than 90 percent of the kids enrolled in diversion complete their agreements.

It worked for Larkin.

In October 2007, she and some friends got busted after throwing eggs at a girl’s house, then speeding away with another car in pursuit.

What Larkin saw as a cure for boredom deputy prosecutors saw as malicious mischief and reckless endangerment.

Larkin opted into the diversion program, and it made a world of difference, she said in a recent interview. She and the community accountability board to which she was assigned decided she should perform community service and write a paper about what she’d done.

“It put a lot of things into perspective for me,” she said. “It showed me that there are a lot of other more productive ways for me to spend my time.”

She quit smoking, made friends with some new people and volunteered with the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, where her “little sister” inspired her to be a better person.

“She was just really sweet and had it really tough, a lot tougher than me,” Larkin said. “It made me feel lucky.”

Adam Lynn: 253-597-8644

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Diversion history

Referrals to the Pierce County Juvenile Court’s diversion program over the past five years:

2004: 3,043

2005: 2,095

2006: 2,402

2007: 2,352

2008: 2,731

How you can help

Pierce County Juvenile Court is looking for more volunteers to staff its community accountability boards. Volunteers must be entering at least their junior year of high school, agree to undergo training and a background check and commit to work two weekday evenings per month for at least a year. Contact volunteer services manager Lin Spellman at lspellm@co.pierce.wa.us">lspellm@co.pierce.wa.us or 253-798-3837.