Building and Reinforcing Restorative Values
One of the Hub’s most important responsibilities is to build a kind of “gravitational pull” towards cooperative processes. This work to create a shared vision is developed and maintained through many different methods.
- Community Discussion and Consensus. In order for a community to truly embrace values, it must discover them for itself. Therefore, RJ City emphasizes the importance of community dialogue. The goal is for people to regularly reflect on the following questions.
- Describe how you want to act when you are at your best in dealing with conflict.
- What would it look like if we had a good process that redressed harm without causing harm?
This dialogue is carried on in community meetings, and the results of this dialogue are consolidated as representatives gather together in district and then citywide meetings to discuss their communities’ responses and to shape a common understanding within RJ City.
- Public Education. Once the shared values have been articulated, public education efforts are undertaken to reinforce those values. This is done on a community-wide basis through posters, billboards and newspaper, television, radio and Internet public service advertisements that creatively present the values. Schools offer education in peaceful conflict resolution processes, and then create and implement procedures that demonstrate how they can be carried out. RJ City has negotiated reductions in insurance rates for homeowners, drivers, business owners, health care patients, and others who take an annual course in conflict resolution.
- Network Staff Training and Accountability. The Hub ensures that Network staff members understand and are able to communicate restorative justice values in responding to crime as well as to conflict. All staff members are required to take introductory training in restorative justice principles and values when they are hired, and must participate in continuing education on innovations and developments in restorative justice. In addition, performance reviews of staff address the implementation of restorative values and programmes, and not simply the activities of staff members. Furthermore, the performance reviews move up and down any hierarchies (e.g., the supervisor and supervisee will review each other).
- Referral forms used to send a matter to an adjudicative process include a section in which staff members are asked to describe the cooperative measures that have been tried or presented to the parties. Similarly, programme evaluations include questions about the number of matters that are handled cooperatively, and about the cooperative measures that are tried or offered to the parties before a matter is sent to adjudicative processes.
- Legislation. RJ City has found that some legislative support is important because it creates a framework within which restorative programmes and approaches may thrive. One statute expresses an official preference for cooperative processes. Another requires the Network to implement mandatory staff training and accountability processes designed to reinforce restorative values. Aside from these general guidelines, the legislation leaves ample flexibility for how those are to be accomplished.
