By Dayna Scott Once upon a time a professional registered to attend a conference. This professional, we’ll call her Jennifer, needed some continuing education credits and the conference looked somewhat interesting from the website description. Upon arriving at the conference, Jennifer searched the room anxiously to see if she knew anybody there. Unfortunately, she didn’t. So, she found a seat at an empty table, ate a bagel, and listened to a mildly entertaining keynote presenter. There were several break-out workshops and she chose the biggest one so she could duck out if she got bored. Good thing she did—because in the workshop, the presenter read PowerPoint slides from a lengthy presentation with a lot of information that she already knew. Mid-way through she decided to leave and go to the lobby. At least the morning wasn’t a total waste because she had brought her computer so she could check e-mail if there was time. After lunch, she attended another breakout session, but it turned out the topic was not really relevant to her job, so she just doodled on the handouts and created next week’s “to do” list. Read More
What is Restorative Justice?
Restorative Justice is an approach to crime and wrongdoing that not only engages victims, offenders and their affected communities, but it is in fact governed by these three stakeholders. Restorative justice is about turning our attention and resources toward first recognizing harms experienced through crime, and then creating the conditions for that harm to be repaired, with a focus on righting relationships which have been thrown out of balance through harmful actions.
The result: restorative justice is cost-effective, shows the highest rates of satisfaction (%90+ from victims, communities & offenders) and reduces the offender re-offense rate to %10, down from a national average of 60% with conventional justice. Restorative Justice emphasizes the way in which crimes affect not only people, but also the community in which it occurs. Read More >>