The juvenile justice system aims for goals of prevention – and hope.

I was still in middle school 19 years ago when 12 students and a teacher were shot and killed at school in Columbine, Colorado. My memories of the news are hazy – we didn’t have cable, something my parents signed up for only after 9/11 – but I remember my middle-school self thinking the shooters seemed “off.” “The trenchcoat mafia,” they were called in news reports.

In the dozens of school shootings that have left hundreds dead and injured in the years since Columbine in 1999, a few go-to narratives have emerged in the aftermath of a mass casualty. Most often, there were signs that something was up with the shooter, something someone heard or saw that, with the benefit of hindsight, was a tip-off.

In the weeks after a gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, shot and killed 17 people, hundreds of thousands of teens organized to a degree unprecedented for their generation. But some instead made copycat threats. At Pacific Grove High School, the police and FBI investigated threats written on bathroom and locker room walls. At North Salinas High School, a message circulated on March 12 via Snapchat: “Attention North Salinas High School at 2:55 according to the girl’s restroom there’s going to be a shooting this is no fucking joke.”

The threat circulated and a student reported it. Police swiftly identified and arrested a suspect.

It made me wonder about what happens when you call the police to report a suspicious kid – and what might happen for a kid who claims to be just joking, or hungry for attention.

There are reasons adults don’t report kids, says Wil Sims, juvenile division manager for the Monterey County Probation Department. There’s “oh, I’ve known him since kindergarten” familiarity, Sims says, and a fear of getting a kid in trouble with the law.

But many cases for minors – things like vandalism or theft under $1,000 – can be diverted by probation officers, who have the power to refer kids to mental health counseling. Last year, more than 400 of 1,050 referrals for minors in Monterey County were diverted, and never went to a judge.

When kids do go to a judge, court is different than it is for grownups. “The objective of juvenile court is rehabilitation, not retribution,” says Monterey County Superior Court Judge Stephanie Hulsey, who oversees Delinquency Court. (She’s trying to get the name changed to Juvenile Justice Court, to sound less pejorative.)

In Hulsey’s courtroom, there’s artwork on the walls, big framed pieces with a cursive word made to look like it’s chalk on a chalkboard: “kindness,” “triumph,” “grace.” On a real chalkboard, kids as young as 10 have been invited to write their own words: “effort,” “perseverance,” “do good,” “cat!”

There are no juries here, no trials. Instead it’s a judge and a probation officer and a defense attorney – most of the time a public defender appointed by the court, since minors have no income – in cushy chairs. The hearings are closed to the public, and bailiffs call defendants by their first name from the lobby.

“I’ll sometimes ask them in court, how do you feel that you’ve changed?” Hulsey says. “I like to think juvenile court is about hope. We never want a young person to lose hope in their own future.”

Sims’ take is that it’s always better to speak up – and that probation officials, first in line for cases involving minors, are only part-law enforcement; they’re also part-social worker.

“We supervise kids who’ve made mistakes,” he says. “We try to provide them with tools to recognize right from wrong, to live a ‘normal life.’ It’s not normal to be around guns. To normalize things that are dangerous is not right.

“We shouldn’t live in fear, shouldn’t think guns are part of regular society. People have the right to own guns, but to think it’s just part of growing up, it’s not.”

In Student Voices, the insert in this week’s issue, kids at 13 high schools in Monterey County tell us in their own words and artwork what they want us to know about gun violence. If there’s one takeaway for me, it’s that these kids are smart and thoughtful – and they are ready to change what has become dangerously normalized.

SARA RUBIN is the Weekly’s editor. Reach her at sara@mcweekly.com or follow her on Twitter @sarahayleyrubin