Okay-so I've agreed to do a 25 minute presentation for my daughter's 5th grade class on career day. Scarier then any voir dire or Judge I've appeared in front of yet. Ha! :-) I've got some good websites for what a court room looks like and who is who in the court room, but was hoping someone may already have a nice presentation I could "lift" that talks more specifically about prosecutors. I am also hoping to do a little age appropriate preventative material on FV, DWI... Help is appreciated!

I don't have such a presentation (or I would be glad to share it), but from experience I can tell you that your presentation is already probably going to be too long with everything you want to include (unless your intention was to prepare PSA handouts for them to read at a later time). Keep it simple. If your PSAs are important to you to discuss during the presentation, ditch or quickly gloss over the regular court stuff with a caveat that everything they see on TV isn't real. I would tend to highlight that the role of a prosecutor is to see that justice is done, and all the different things that means, perhaps using DWI and DV as examples (e.g., a reluctant victim wanting to drop charges out of fear, and still going forward to protect her).

A few years ago, my stepson (then about 8) said that my job was to put people in jail and his mom's job (as a defense attorney in another jurisdiction) was to keep them out. I think that oversimplified it, but at least it demonstrated that at his age he could understand the concept of an adversarial system.

When I did this, we used the stolen cookie jar hypo. Had a coworker out in the hallway come running in and steal the cookie jar and then run out. We asked the kids what they saw and explained that's what they would tell the police officer. Then we brought the coworker in and talked about how a case goes from the cops, to us, to the jury, etc.

Once I had to explain to 3rd graders how the appellate system works (I was clerking for a judge at the time). I explained getting busted by your older sister is like going to trial. Then you have the chance to complain to your parents when they get home (the coa). And if you don't like what your parents have to say, you can try to go over their head to your grandparents (the supremes).

Both seemed to work pretty well.

OK--lol...my daughter said, "Mom--you rocked--you were so much cooler than the Dr. who said, blah blah blah blah and yelled at us." Guess that means it went over well with the 5th graders. I ended up doing a colorful powerpoint with the typical what is a prosecutor, why do i like being a prosecutor, what kind of schooling, hours, money, etc.--threw in some jokes and interactive stuff, then we had a MINI trial on goldilocks. passed out a script i had prewritten and they really had fun. thanks for the suggestions. it was hard keeping it simple, but that worked.