What if the same court system that puts young men behind bars, could help keep them out of court in the first place?

Studies have shown that children with positive role models are less likely to commit a crime. The Mentor Act is a bill that makes mentorship a legal excusal from jury duty– giving children more mentors and reducing the need for juries.

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The Bill

We created a bill that gives people who volunteer with an officially recognized mentorship program a legal excusal from jury duty. It’s a fully functional document and all it needs is sponsorship from a state representative to be on its way to becoming an actual law.

Help pass this bill by sending it to your state representative and sharing with your friends or go to mentoring.esquire.com to learn how you can make a difference in a child’s life by becoming a mentor today.

Section 1
This act shall be known and may be cited as The Mentor Act.
Section 2
Be it known that those who volunteer their time to the counsel of youth through an officially recognized mentorship program (“Mentors”) have done a public good by empowering youth. Studies show that mentored youth are less likely to commit crimes. Therefore, mentorship removes future juvenile offenders from the justice system.
Section 3
As recognition of this public good and because they have reduced the need for criminal jury trials due to their services, Mentors may be excused from jury duty.
Section 4
This act shall take effect on the 90th day after enactment.

Send The Bill To Your Representatives

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Jury Service is handled by your state government. So we’ve built a tool that lets you send a copy of The Mentor Act directly to your state representative. If they support it, they can choose to sponsor it so that it can then be debated and voted upon.

The Stats

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Men make up 90% of our prison population.

If you are a boy in America in the twenty first century, you are:

Three times as likely as a girl to be diagnosed with an attention-deficit or learning disorder and twice as likely to be on medication for it.
More likely to be held back in school. More likely to drop out of school. Less likely to go to college. Less likely to graduate from college.
Twice as likely to abuse alcohol, and until you are twenty-four, five times as likely to kill yourself.

For more information about becoming a mentor visit mentoring.esquire.com.
The inmates who appear in this video are participating in the Kansas Department of Corrections Mentoring for Success program.

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What we're sending on your behalf:

Please find here a document entitled The Mentor Act. It is a bill that establishes mentorship of a child as a legal excusal from jury duty. Studies have shown that children with positive role models are statistically less likely to commit a crime. After just 18 months with mentors, kids were found to be:

46% less likely to begin using illegal drugs
27% less likely to begin using alcohol
52% less likely to skip school
33% less likely to hit someone

This bill aims to reduce the number of people committing crimes, cases tried, and jurors needed. By passing it, you will be increasing the number of mentors for our kids and lessening the need for juries in the first place. Please consider introducing this bill to your legislature.