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Notes for Restorative Justice Volunteers Mending the Fabric Of Our Community

A Division of the Center for Community and Neighborhoods (CCAN)
and the
Community and Economic Development Office (CEDO)

A Success Story

This story is about a recent participant who came through the panel process for petit larceny and unlawful mischief. As the process unfolded, the offender started to consider ways that the community might address issues that particularly impact youth. One of the group ideas was that she offer suggestions for solving the problem. As a result she wrote a letter to the City Council describing the need for the city to provide safe places for youth to gather. One of her suggestions was that more police patrol certain places where some disruptive youth hang out. At the completion of the process the letter was forwarded to City Council.

Councilman Paul Decelles called after receipt of the letter saying that he was going to read it as part of an upcoming Council meeting. The Councilman mentioned that he would send it on to the BPD for the Chief and the lieutenant for her neighborhood so that they could follow-up and maybe involve her in some way. Also, he was interested in how the letter came to be written and so it became another opportunity to talk a bit about Restorative Justice.

As it currently stands, the Burlington Safety Commission has invited our participant to speak at one of their meetings.

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We all have panel experiences that have touched us for one reason or another. Please consider submitting your “success story” to share. Please consider submitting a “success story” next time to share with everyone.

HELP!

If you have any expertise in using the program Publisher, would you consider spending an hour with me sometime, anytime, to give me a quick overview of what this program can do?

Thank you, Barbara (bshawdorso@ci.burlington.vt.us)

You Say It's Your Birthday!

• Nate Moreau 10/11
• Richard Kemp 10/12
• Christian Franklin 10/23
• Sara Giannoni 10/28
• Nina Jaffe 11/22
• Catherine Slocum 11/28

New Victim Liaison Group

I wonder sometimes what this process was like when it first started seven years ago. As far back as I go (days over City Market) I have seen such a tremendous change in our capabilities. We have been encouraged to grow with this process at every turn and to expand our transparency as we go. And now I am pleased to be a part of yet another development of the process; making the voice of the victim stronger in our panel meetings. As you know, we have a group of Victim Liaisons, hopefully at least one for each panel, who will be encouraging the victim to participate. Now when I say participate, I mean maybe to be there in person, maybe send in a statement to be read, or maybe just being asked to stay informed as the case progresses. But, we have all agreed that the VL should try to make it each time their assigned case has activity from start to closure. It seems as though there is a strengthening voice in our society asking for more victim’s rights. Restorative Justice is a place where that can and should happen as our process for addressing the needs of victim, offender, and community is credible only if all parties are heard.

Helping Us to Help Others

Hurray for the new Resource Guide! Linda has been working all summer on developing and refining our Resource binder that we can use during our Panel discussions. She has arranged the information according to general needs, such as medical information, education and training, housing etc. with an easy to use Table of Contents. You just flip to the section applicable and there are names and descriptions of resources that you can copy and hand out to panel participants. This Guide is just the best and quickest way to tell someone about a resource in the community that they may need. Remember…we are now asked to include these referrals in our notes as we are required to keep track of this for DOC.

Good Preparation Sets the Tone

It is good for each of us to have various tasks to do during the panel meetings and to switch it up, so to speak. Before you invite the participant to come in to the room, take a moment to “assign” different responsibilities such as, case note taker, calendar person, person to do introduction, person to write the contract, person to be a time keeper (if you think it is necessary for that night). Being intentional about this will ensure that each person has a task and that each task is given full attention.