( – promoted by odum)
After I wrapped up my race for the Franklin County State Senate seat almost a year ago I got more involved with the Saint Albans Community Justice Center. I have been a volunteer there since 2008, and serving on a Reparative Board has taught me a lot about my community, crime, and what Restorative Justice can offer victims and offenders alike.
As one of fourteen CJC’s in Vermont (visit www.cjnvt.org to learn more), the Saint Albans Community Justice Center is tackling issues of crime and recidivism with innovative programs that put community volunteers in the driver’s seat. Reparative Boards offer low-level offenders a chance to explain their actions, develop a list of those affected and construct a contract with items that seek to repair the harm cause to victims, offenders and the community when a crime occurs.
Offender Reentry programs like Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) help offenders transition from prison back to their communities. I am helping to form new CoSA’s in St. Albans as the CJC’s new Volunteer Coordinator. This program matches three volunteers with an offender and provides support and accountability for that offender for a year, increasing the likelihood that the transition will be successful.
Under the leadership of our Director, Marc Wennberg the St. Albans CJC has been growing. We are now planning to roll out a Parallel Justice program. This program will begin by helping to provide compensation to victims of vandalism like slashed tires and broken car windows. With the help of Burlington’s CJC and Crime Victim’s Services of Vermont we are making great strides toward providing restorative justice for victims, even when no offender can be found.
For more information about the St. Albans Community Justice Center or if you’d like to get involved, feel free to contact me at m.mccarthy@stalbansvt.org
As a COSA and Rep Board volunteer, I appreciate what you do as coordinator, and that you’re doing so much to spread the word.
Thank you for all you and the Community Justice Center do.
Reparative opportunities are extremely important to both the victim and the offender, and are sadly lacking in our conventional justice system. By focussing soley on punishment, a more important, almost tribal lesson about personal responsibility gets buried on the “back-page.”
That lesson about trying to “make things right” may well be the key to reducing recidivism.
The Community Justice Centers’ programs are the extremely valuable far end of a continuum that begins at arraignment.
At the near end are the 14 Court Diversion programs that offer an alternative path to people who made an error of judgment and broke the law and can make something of their lives if given a chance to proceed without a criminal record.
I’m on the volunteer hearing panel for Court Diversion in my county, as well as on the board of directors for the nonprofit agency itself. We get everyone from young kids — usually for fighting or shoplifting or having a weapon at school — to grandparents — often for shoplifting. Many of our clients are young adults, just out on their own, and one day they just blew it. Some want to go to a tech school or college or get into the service, much more difficult, perhaps even impossible, when you’ve got a criminal record.
The hearing panel listens to their stories (while having access to the arresting officer’s statement and sometimes notes from the victims), asks questions, votes in their presence on whether to accept the cases, and if the case is accepted, works with them to craft a program that makes amends to the victims, helps the clients understand why what they did was wrong and who it hurt, and restores the community they’ve disrupted by their behavior.
It so happens that I’m on a hearing panel this afternoon.
Both ends of the continuum are necessary. And, oh, btw, did I mention that by keeping people who’ve made a mistake out of the court system that we’re saving taxpayers money?
NanuqFC
The first prison I ever saw had inscribed on it ‘Cease to do evil; learn to do well’; but as the inscription was on the outside, the prisoners could not read it. ~ George Bernard Shaw