Letter: Funding Restorative Justice |CITY|

Dear friends,

Today's news seems to be filled with accounts of fundraising efforts by restorative justice programmes.

The Norwich Evening News (UK) reports that Norwich Rape Crisis, a 25-year-old charity providing support to rape victims, has combined with MPower, a 6-year-old charity helping men who have been abused, to create the Sexual Violence Alliance (SEVA) Norfolk. The two organizations have received funding from the Department for Health to allow it to hire administrative staff, freeing the counsellors and volunteers to provide counselling and phone-line advice. Additional operational costs are covered through donations generated by individuals. the Norwich Rape Crisis hotline gives an example of a woman who chose to have her farewell party when she left her job at an Inn which was donated for the night. Ticket sales, a raffle, an auction and donations and sales that night raised £1230.

The Oak Ridger (US) reports on a 21-year-old mediation programme's fundraising dinner. Community Mediation Services started to provide an alternative to incarceration, then expanded to address ten-parent mediation, and has added visitation mediation to handle disputes over child visitation for never-married parents. The article notes that Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) is a significant supporter of Community Mediation Services. ORAU is a consortium of 98 academic institutions offering doctoral degrees.

The Victoria Advocate (US) has a story about a request for victim services funding being made by the sheriff's office and district attorney's office to the Texas Attorney General's office. The story notes that the Victoria County Commissioners Court will asked for resolutions in support of the two applications. The grant applications total $544,400. [Not surprisingly, the County Commissioners Court endorsed the applications.]

The Express & Echo's (UK) website notes that Victim Support Devon is organising an abseil down a building at Exeter University to raise funds. Volunteers will gain sponsors for their effort, which will be done under the supervision of a local climbing centre. Victim Suport has raised more than £3,000 through this event in previous years.

Finally, Marquette University Law School (US) announces that its Restorative Justice Initiative received a grant of $384,290 from the US federal government "to coordinate community gang prevention and intervention activities with law enforcement, prosecutors, social service agencies, faith communities, corrections officials, and the neighborhood communities".

These are scattered examples, certainly not a representative sample of restorative justice programmes. But there are several observations we might make.

First, the location of the programme appears to have something to do with the sources of funding. The Texas victim support programmes are based in the sheriff's' and district attorneys' offices and were seeking endorsement from the county commissioners in an application to the attorney general's office. The Norfolk, Devon and Oak Ridge programmes relied on volunteers for operation and sought relatively smaller amounts of funding for administrative and operational costs.

Second, several of the community-based charities had successfully raised the funds they needed for several decades. Norwich Rape Crisis and Community Mediation Services have been in existence for over 20 years. They had found ways to raise the support they needed from community donations (and presumably portions from governmental sources as well) over a long period of time.

Third, educational institutions demonstrated support for these programmes. Community Mediation Services receives support from ORAU, Marquette University Law School has a restorative justice programme, and the Devon programme had gotten agreement (one assumes) from Exeter University to abseil down one of its buildings.

Fourth, the largest amounts of funding in these stories came from the government through a grant application process. In other words, even the government-based programmes had to apply for funding.

In RJ City, programmes are located fully in the community, fully within government offices, and in several combinations of the two (see pages 16-18 of the Phase One final report). Some programmes may be temporary because the need is temporary. For those that aren't, the puzzle of funding will be an important feature, and one we must struggle with.

Let's stay in touch,

Dan Van Ness